


how to feel a tranquil life

by andibeth82



Series: and when we're there we'll belong [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Multi, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-05-06 21:19:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 69,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14656449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: Clint closes his eyes, exhaustion flowing through his body and settling into every nerve ending, every bone broken and bruised and scarred over the years. “We both had a choice.”“No,” Natasha says shortly. “You didn’t have a choice. But I did. And they were going to come for your family, Clint! Formyfamily!”“And you think running away made them any safer?”Natasha shakes her head. “No,” she acknowledges softly. “But at least it gave them a chance.”Clint knows he can’t hide the pain in his eyes. “I don’t know if it was worth the chance.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fits into the universe of my previous stories but stands on its own, especially given the aftermath of Infinity War -- therefore, you don't need the intense knowledge of the entire series in order to read this. In every sense, it's a continuation of the story between Clint, Laura, and Natasha, but it also deals very much with the aftermath of a post Infinity War world and how a family (no matter how you define family) can be affected...and how they can grieve and fight on. 
> 
>  
> 
>   
> "Let my toes teach the shore  
> how to feel a tranquil life  
> through the wetness of sands 
> 
> Let my heart latch the door  
> of blackness, as all my pain  
> now blue sky understands"  
> ― Munia Khan  
> 

**2018: IOWA**

 

On a cold day in the middle of winter, Laura sits at the window, staring out at the chilly morning dawn.

She draws her legs to her chest and blows ripples into her lukewarm coffee, gripping the ceramic mug tighter as if she can siphon the last of its warmth into her palms. She’s always loved this time of year -- as a child, she loved the feeling of being cozy while sitting in her favorite chair with tea while reading a new book, her dad shoveling fluffy white off the porch, her mom singing along with songs on the radio. As a newlywed, she loved the feeling of being cozy while sitting in the big yet comfortable living room, Clint making hot chocolate with Bailey’s, snuggling with her into the musty afghan. As a mother, she loved the feeling of being cozy while sitting on her bed, surrounded by toys and clothes and other household messes, Cooper and Lila reading at her feet in a carefully constructed blanket fort.

“It’s Monday!”

Laura tears her gaze away from the window and turns to meet Lila’s round face, framed by long trails of morning-mussed brown hair.

“Monday means it’s Auntie Nat day!”

“Yes, it is,” she agrees, putting down her coffee and leaning over to pick up her daughter. “Where’s your brother, Lila?”

The response is what Laura should have expected -- a harsh twang that sounds like it’s come from an off-key guitar. Lila looks at her mom with a raised eyebrow inherent of Natasha.

“Let’s go get your cereal and then I’ll get your brother,” she says as another sound rings out from upstairs, this one shriller. “Both of your brothers.”

Lila slides off her mom’s lap and prances into the kitchen. Laura follows, reaching the edge of the room just as Lila drags a large wooden step stool to the front of one of the cabinets, climbing up slowly and pausing on the top step. Laura helps her open the highest cabinet, displaying an array of cereal boxes, and Lila dutifully picks out Honey Nut Cheerios before climbing down from the stool. Laura prepares her bowl while Lila sits down at the table.

“I’m gonna tell Auntie Nat all the things that I did in school,” Lila announces, swinging her legs back and forth. “And then I’m gonna get her to read my new book!” She pauses as Laura puts the bowl down in front of her and shoves her spoon into the milk, slurping loudly. “What are you gonna do, mommy?”

Laura shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she admits. “But it won’t be more fun than _that_.” She runs her fingers gently over Lila’s side causing her daughter to yelp in surprise, flinging her spoon backwards and sending soggy oats to the floor. Laura waits, knowing it will get taken care of in less time than she expects and sure enough, Lucky comes bounding into the kitchen from where he’s been sleeping in the living room. He immediately starts licking the remnants of cereal and Laura lets the dog happily attend to the mess, surveying the room quickly before heading upstairs.

She hits the upper landing, stepping over the baby gate (Nate is turning out to the worst offender of her three children when it comes to not being able to sit still and she can’t decide if she’s proud or annoyed), and heads to the joint room Lila shares with her younger brother. Nate is sitting in his recently acquired big boy bed, lying on his side peeking out of the safety rails, his thumb stuck in his mouth.

“Good morning, baby boy.” Laura walks forward and picks him up, snuggling him gently and kissing his head. She breathes in the remnants of his baby smell, which are slowly but surely on their way out now that he’s growing a little more.

“Ah Nat! Ah Nat!” he exclaims loudly as he headbutts into Laura’s arm. She swoops him towards the ground as he squeals and then brings him back up with a big smile, before settling him against her body.

“Everyone’s excited for Natasha,” Laura agrees, hoisting Nate higher on her hip. “I know.” She leaves the room and starts down the hall, peeking into Cooper’s room. He’s facing away from her, his back to the door and his head turned towards the window with its slate-grey landscape; the sharp twangs Laura had heard earlier have dovetailed into soft thrums as he picks at the strings of the old guitar.

“Hey kiddo.” Laura leans against the doorway, shifting Nate easily in her arms as he wiggles, because she hasn’t had three kids for nothing. “Come on. You’re going to be late for school.”

“It’s _cold_ out,” Cooper responds scathingly, as if Laura has asked him to do the dumbest thing in the world.

Laura rolls her eyes at his back. “Yes, it is. It’s cold, because it’s winter. You don’t get to stay home unless those white flakes are falling from the sky, remember?”

Cooper doesn’t answer but Laura can see the way his shoulders hunch in tension, and she knows he’s probably slipping into some sort of cranky demeanor.

“I haven’t had enough coffee for this,” she mutters before raising her voice. “Coop. Please. _Now_.” 

Cooper grumbles loudly but slides off the bed, leaving the guitar sitting at a lopsided angle. Laura watches him walk away and reaches over to move the guitar with her free hand, propping it against the dresser.

“I wish your brother was still a baby,” she whispers to Nathaniel with a small sigh as he giggles. “Don’t tell him I said that, okay?”

The door to the bathroom opens and closes, and Laura figures that’s confirmation that her son is somewhat on his way to getting himself together. She puts Nate down on the bed, letting him crawl gleefully over the covers. Assuming he won’t hurt himself for five minutes, she walks to the window and pulls her arms tight against her chest, dipping her head until her nose comes up against the old SHIELD sweatshirt she’s wearing. It smells like stale coffee and baby food but there’s something familiar about it, the same way there’s something familiar about Nate’s babyness, a lingering sense of comfort that she lets herself bask in, alone and surrounded by spare quiet. She keeps her gaze trained on the window, on the wind pulling at the branches of the big tree in the yard, her left thumb rubbing against her wedding ring, fingers absently slipping over the thin band. She tries to ignore the ache that seems to lingers inside her gut, the one she’s suddenly not sure has come from not eating before coffee or from something else entirely.

“Mommy!” Lila’s voice rings out from downstairs, mingling with the bathroom door opening. “I’m gonna be _late_!”

Laura immediately snaps into parenting mode as if a switch has been flipped, years of packing lunches and herding children and answering questions fusing together into one fluid motion. She forces Cooper down the stairs, settles Nate in his highchair, wipes Lila’s face, cleans up the mess her breakfast has made, and grabs two pre-made lunches from their resting space on the top shelf of the fridge.

“Coop, what are you going to tell Auntie Nat?” Lila asks as Cooper grabs a banana from the fruit bowl.

“Dunno. Probably play and talk about stuff,” Cooper answers, peeling the banana and shoving half of it in his mouth. “Mom, where’s my bag?”

“By the stairs,” Laura answers automatically, following Lila and Cooper into the living room. Lila finishes putting on her boots and coats first, running over to her mom and declaring her intimacy. Cooper’s slower to come say goodbye but before Laura can really worry, he’s walking over for a hug while Laura manages to get in a quick kiss -- a victory if there ever was one.

“I’ll pick you up after school,” Laura says, opening the door. “Be safe. And Coop --”

“Yeah, I know,” Cooper says, grabbing Lila’s hand tightly. “We still gotta be careful and stuff.”

Laura smiles as her kids walk out the door. She waits until they get to the edge of the dirt road, and continues to watch from the window until the big yellow school bus pulls up, Cooper and Lila disappearing inside. It’s quiet again in the house, the only sounds coming from Nate and his random babbling. The silence mingles with the dishwasher starting to hum and the air whistling outside, gusts shaking the silver wind chimes with a fury usually reserved for big storms. Laura shivers internally; she doesn’t mind being home alone most days now that it’s been years and she’s used to the farm, but there are always times that it feels bigger and lonelier.

She walks back into the kitchen where her youngest son is playing with cheerios and smiling his big, semi-toothed grin that Laura can’t help but smile back at. She decides to take advantage of the quiet morning, grabbing her phone and connecting her bluetooth to the new speakers Clint had recently put in. In quick succession, Abba starts blasting into the room, and Nate claps his hands in joy.

Laura starts to feel a little calmer as she starts her morning routine. She cleans the dishes that her children have haphazardly shoved in the sink and brings the latest load of laundry into living room to fold after moving Nathaniel to a small play mat. Lowering the music on Abba, she grabs a remote and finds an in-progress episode of _Paw Patrol_ which, upon raising the volume, has Nate reacting as if someone has fed him ice cream with a million sprinkles. Laura finds herself feeling thankful that she can still appreciate the small and genuine moments of innocent childhood after countless moments of trauma and worry, and satisfied that at least one part of her life is under control for the time being, she starts folding clothes until the cell phone that’s sitting on the side table -- the one she always keeps in close range when she’s around the house -- starts to ring. Laura picks it up, glancing at the clock.

“You’re late.”

“I know.” Natasha sounds out of breath and more tired than usual. “I’m sorry. I’m usually watching the clock like a hawk.”

“I hate when you use that term,” Laura says, making a face at the window. “What was it now? A bomb? An undercover raid?”

“A weapons heist,” Natasha says, entirely practical and casual as if she’s telling Laura she’s been held up because she got stuck in traffic. “But we got ‘em good, if I do say so myself. How are you?”

“Okay,” Laura says, looking at her son who has crawled to the edge of the television stand and planted himself in front of the screen. Suddenly, she’s too tired to be concerned about the fact that he’ll probably be the only kid in her household who will need glasses full-time, despite birthing two avid readers who spent most of their childhood sticking their noses in books under the covers with only the aid of flashlights. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”

“I called you, didn’t I?” Natasha asks lightly. Laura bites down on her lower lip.

“And you’ll be home later?”

“The usual monthly check-in,” Natasha confirms. “I don’t know how long I can stay, though.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Laura says, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice. She stops and takes a breath, letting it out slowly. “I’m sorry. I know you’re trying...and I know it’s hard. I hate that I’m like this.”

“You think you have to apologize?” Natasha asks, a tinge of amusement coloring her voice.

Laura laughs against her will, hating how susceptible her emotions are after all these years. “No, I know I don’t. I just...I hate this. I hate how long it’s been. I hate that you can’t come _home_.”

Natasha remains quiet and Laura’s heart leaps into her throat, though she refuses to let it go any farther.

“You can’t come home, right?”

“Not yet,” Natasha says carefully, her voice guarded, as if there’s something she’s not saying. “There’s still some things I need to do. There’s still people out there that could hurt you. And us.”

Laura nods at the wall, watching Nate bang his hands against the television screen. “You _do_ know we’ve been okay for the past six months, right?”

“And you _do_ know that Ross checks in with Rhodey every week to see if he can find us, right?” Natasha counters. “This isn’t ideal, Laura. I know it’s not. But this is not how it’ll be forever.”

“Right.” Laura sits down and Lucky trots up to her, placing his wet nose on her lap. Laura brushes a hand against the dog’s head. “Remember when you used to come home and disappear and then you wouldn’t show up for months at a time?”

“This is worse?” Natasha asks, even though Laura knows she knows the answer.

“Definitely worse. Please stay safe.”

“I will,” Natasha promises. “See you soon.”

The call is too short but it’s nothing new; she’s used to short calls and she’d rather that Natasha found the time to check in than not check in at all. Still, despite knowing the drill, she finds herself feeling sad, a curiously morbid depression gripping at the corners of her heart.

“I see doggie!” Nate cries gleefully at the television. He flops back harmlessly onto his diapered bottom, oblivious to the stress and turmoil currently lending itself to Laura’s brain. She takes in the sight, letting herself take stock of the present as Lucky trots over and starts licking the side of his face.

“Let’s get you dressed for the day before I get even more stressed out,” Laura suggests as she bends over to pick him up, smoothing down his unruly light hair. She takes his laugh as agreeing with her words and walks back upstairs; changing his diaper and getting him dressed properly only takes less than a minute because a third child not only meant another round of diaper buying and baby proofing, it also meant that her and Clint were changing diapers one-handed while on the phone or talking to each other across the room.

“There are are,” Laura declares as she helps Nate stand on the dresser, his tiny legs wobbling under his plump body.

“Kind of disappointed that he doesn’t have my balance.”

Laura turns, smiling at Clint leaning against the door frame and only a little annoyed she hasn’t picked up on his footsteps. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Not long,” Clint says, pushing away from the wall and walking forward to drop a kiss on her head. “Got your bagels.”

“Thanks,” Laura says, turning to kiss him back. “But I’m beginning to think your nice gesture to get up early and leave me with three kids was just a ploy to not have to deal with Cooper’s attitude.”

Clint smirks. “It kinda was. But I did walk the dog for you.” He takes Nate from her arms, pretending to bite his son’s ear as the baby giggles. “Did Nat call?”

“Right on schedule,” Laura says, throwing the dirty diaper in the trash can. “Well, almost right on schedule. You know, I thought I’d be used to this now. It’s been two years, but --”

“But, it’s been two years,” Clint breaks in with a sigh. “I know.”

It’s not that they didn’t talk about it or think about it, because they did -- it had been a long, hard conversation, one that had come with fighting and aggravations and with the caveat of Natasha going off to join Steve meaning that she was more or less required to make frequent visits. Clint catches Laura playing with her ring and reaches out with one hand.

“Hey, you’re making dinner tonight, right? Spaghetti?”

Laura knows exactly what he’s doing and she’s actually grateful for it, because he could have easily called her out for moping or overthinking. She nods.

“Lila’s already counting the hours, by the way.”

“Like that’s surprising,” Clint mutters. “We’ve established that on a scale of one to ten, our daughter would rather follow Natasha into battle rather than her own father.”

“If it helps, you’re still the person she talked about at parent appreciation day,” Laura offers, reaching for the baby. Clint lets her take Nate with what Laura notices is reluctance, and she gives him a curious look. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Clint says wistfully. “Just...he’s getting so big.”

“Babies do that,” Laura says with a small smile. “Come on, I’ll get you some coffee and maybe you can figure out what you’re doing with the barn loft.”

“Does that mean I’m off school pick-up duty?” Clint asks hopefully.

Laura rolls her eyes. “Don’t push it, Hawkeye.”

 

**2018: WAKANDA**

 

The problem with everything happening so fast is that Natasha doesn’t really have a chance to comprehend it until she stops moving.

Surrounded by the remaining members of the Dora Milaje and a battlefield full of dead and injured Wakandans, she sits down on the trunk of a half-turned up tree, wincing as exhaustion and pain hit all the bones in her body. Natasha raises her head, blinking warily into the bright sunlight; Steve is still sitting alone by Vision’s broken body and Thor has wandered off in a daze and Bruce is attempting to extract himself from the Hulkbuster with seemingly futile results. Rhodey is simply staring at the ground, as if he’s trying to figure out where everyone has disappeared to.

 _Clint_ , her mind thinks in a panic, some part of her exhausted state shoving clarity into her brain. _Clint, Laura, Lila, oh god, Laura_ \--

“Miss Romanoff.”

Okoye stands before her using a voice that sounds tired and worn, cracks fissuring underneath the firmness of her words. Natasha looks up and instantly sees herself, so many years of trying to hold it together while everything is falling apart, and her heart aches for the suffering that she knows hasn’t even started to settle in for her.

“Okoye.”

Okoye smiles tightly. “If you do not mind, I would like to take a look at your injuries.”

“I think I’m okay.”

“Please,” Okoye says almost too desperately. Natasha opens her mouth to object again but decides against it and nods, shifting while Okoye bends down in front of her. Natasha pulls off her boots with a grunt, biting her tongue to hide her discomfort. It takes a few moments to unhook the buckles and snaps of her suit but eventually, she gets the outer vest open, revealing a thick unitard stained with dark splotches. Okoye leans forward, pressing two hands against it.

“You are hurt,” Okoye observes as she puts two fingers on Natasha’s ribs, when Natasha can’t help the gasp of pain that accompanies her touch.

“I’ll be fine,” she deflects automatically, ignoring Okoye’s look of worry. “It’s not the first time I’ve been knocked down. I heal quickly.”

Okoye frowns. “You are sure you do not want some medical attention? We can at least give you something for your injuries.”

Natasha swallows, looking around at the carnage spread before her. “I don’t suppose you have something in Wakanda that passes for alcohol while I get that medical attention, do you?”

Okoye gives her a small smile. “They say our wine is better than anything you could find in all American countries.”

Natasha smiles back. “In that case, I guess getting checked out wouldn’t be so bad.”

She leaves her uniform undone but puts her boots back on, allowing Okoye to help her up and hold her arm as they walk across the field. Natasha knows what the Dora Milaje is doing -- busying herself by fixing and helping, taking stock of what she can control in a moment where everything seems to be spiraling painfully out of whack -- and she feels achingly sympathetic. She wishes she could offer some measure of comfort or advice, but realizes she has no idea how to even address the situation at hand. How do you confront the idea that in a snap of a finger, people you cared about were simply _gone_?

The idea of wiping out half the universe had honestly seemed laughable. In one sense, it was the biggest threat they’d come up against in their entire history of avenging and yet even while they were fighting Thanos and valiantly (but hopelessly) losing, Natasha had felt like the stakes hadn’t been that much higher than anything she’d come up against in the past. Maybe it was the familial grounding instilled in her by Clint and Laura, but things that were otherworldly never seemed so intense to her as they did to her teammates -- not that she didn’t take things like aliens coming down from space seriously.

But now she has to figure out how to wrap her brain around the fact that people are gone -- just _gone_. People she had laughed with and shared memories with, people she had fought with and cared about. She had spent months and years with Sam on the run, learning all the small things about him that she would come to respect and even roll her eyes at -- and now he was gone, as if he’d never existed. Wanda had become as close to her as she knew she was to the Barton family and by default, she felt like she had gotten to know Vision as well. Natasha chokes up thinking of Vision; not a casualty of Thanos’ finger snap genocide but a casualty all the same, of Wanda, who she had spent the past two years watching in the absence of Clint being on the field, checking in and making sure she was handling everything okay, from relationships to food to safety -- Wanda was gone, nothing but a pile of ash and dust.

“Come,” Okoye says, leading her up the field and into one of the buildings that hasn’t been ruined by the attacks. Natasha is about to ask how she’s going to get help here; the building itself looks fine but inside, it looks like a tornado has demolished most of the equipment. Natasha steps cautiously around broken glass as Okoye points to a part of the dust covered floor, and Natasha watches as she moves her hand over air. The space in front of her transforms into a shimmering blue and then two doors open, revealing a pristine underground laboratory.

“You did not think that we wouldn’t be prepared if anything happened to our country, did you?” Okoye asks slyly as she walks down recently materialized stairs. Natasha follows and sits down slowly on a vacant chair, finally removing her boots.

“Lie down,” Okoye instructs. For once in her life, Natasha doesn’t care to bite back about being ordered around despite respecting the Dora Milaje to an extent that her old teachers would probably laugh at. She stares up at a hologrammed ceiling that is definitely _not_ the ruined floor of the lab that she had walked into, lying still while Okoye moves a wand over her body and then translates whatever she’s scanned of Natasha’s injuries to a screen that’s appeared in front of her. Natasha closes her eyes, trying to zone out while attempting to keep her brain from flying in ten different directions.

Clint had been home, that much she knew. In the five seconds that she had to understand what happened, she had never been so glad for house arrest. But how far-reaching did Thanos and his consequences go? He had spoken about balancing scales. He could have been bullshitting about the “half the universe” part of his threat, but if he wasn’t…

If he wasn’t...

And anyway, Clint was far away. He was nowhere near the battle where everyone had disappeared in front of them. Clint couldn’t be -- Laura _couldn’t_ be --

 _No_ , she decides, taking another deep breath. He had to be okay. But if Thanos had affected everyone, it was random, all of it. And there was no reason why it was Bucky and not Steve, why it was Sam and not Rhodey. It could be Cooper, it could be Lila, it could be Nathaniel. It might not have been any of them, or it could have been all of them, or one of them...and if it was...Natasha knows there’s absolutely no way to know who in her life has been affected unless she leaves Wakanda, and she doesn’t think that’s much of an option at the moment.

“Do you remember the last time we talked, Miss Romanoff?”

Natasha opens her eyes and smiles grimly, because she has a feeling Okoye isn’t talking about half an hour ago on the battlefield. “Yes,” she admits after a beat. “After Lagos. You were kind enough to meet with me so we could talk about what happened.”

“I only went because I felt like it would be a disservice to my king and my country if I did not act cordial,” Okoye says levelly. “It is not in the realm of the Dora Milaje to brush off civility.”

“I appreciated it, you know.” She inclines her head, catching Okoye’s eye. Okoye doesn’t react but a part of her lip shifts upwards, a barely visible wrinkle in an otherwise stoic facade.

You are good for now,” Okoye says calmly, switching off the hologram and bright light. “We have taken some scans of the bones in your ribcage and it should not be too long until we can set them for you. If you will give us a few moments, Miss Romanoff.”

“Of course,” Natasha says, sitting up. “And thank you.” She puts a hand against her chest, taking deep breaths, and looks up as Okoye hands her a glass of dark red liquid.

“While you wait, and as promised.”

Natasha takes a sip of the wine and swallows, noting how easily it goes down while still keeping its potent taste. She takes in the room again, looking around at how intricately everything is designed. She remembers the last time she’d been in Wakanda -- after the Raft, after Clint had lost his hearing -- and how it had felt cold and uninviting and unfamiliar compared to the warmth of the farm. She had been a little lost then, too, but she could at least try to make herself feel better by thinking of Laura and Clint, and the life that she knew she could always return to. The difference was that this time, there might be no going back to what she knew, if everything really had changed the way Thanos promised.

“General.”

Natasha glances towards the stairs as a Wakandan, one that Natasha hasn’t yet met, walks slowly towards them looking both worried and confused.

“W’Kabi.” Okoye straightens up.

“We have a situation at the border.”

Okoye frowns and opens her hand, allowing a hologram to emanate onto her palm from the beads she wears around her wrist. “Show me.”

As she speaks, the hologram changes and Natasha inhales a sharp breath at what she sees -- Clint, screaming hoarsely and looking like absolute shit, pounding against the border that has been put back up in the aftermath of the attack.

“He found our border and began demanding that we let him inside,” W’Kabi says as Natasha watches the scene play out in front of her. “After what has happened...I do not know what might be considered a threat and I thought I should come to you.”

Okoye looks at Natasha, her eyes sharp. “This man...he is not familiar to me. Do you know him?”

Natasha swallows. “Yeah,” she says softly, a fresh pain blossoming inside her chest and almost bringing her to her knees. “I know him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story starts around the aftermath of CACW, filling in moments of the past two years between that film and Infinity War (working within the "real world" timeline) while focusing on the fallout from the present. As Clint and Laura barely got a mention in Infinity War, my aim is to keep fleshing out the stories I've created for this family and explore how they fit into what we now have as canon -- both before and after "the snap heard round the world." 
> 
> Disclaimer: Chapter count is not entirely set in stone, and more chapters may be added down the line. Additional characters will be added as they appear. As usual, I make no promises for long chapters and lots of feelings, so I hope you stay along for the ride!
> 
> Find me on tumblr @isjustprogress for fic and more.


	2. Chapter 2

**2018**

 

Clint doesn’t even remember how he gets to Wakanda.

He feels like he _should_ remember, because getting to a country that’s literally off the grid when half the population has disappeared and there’s not even anyone left to control fucking flight patterns isn’t something that you can just pull out of thin air. But he also can’t remember the last time he’s eaten or slept, and all of his time has been categorized by the digital numbers of the princess watch that hangs snugly around his wrist.

Lila’s watch. The last thing his daughter had given him, that he was in the middle of fixing, before she disappeared as if she’d never existed at all.

He had just made leftovers for dinner, when it happened, and their plates were still piled high in the kitchen sink. Laura was tired and he had given her the night off from any kind of work, especially since she’d been up with Nathaniel for half of the morning. Lila was reading at the table, and Cooper was lying in the living room with Lucky. The television was on mostly for background noise and Clint was sitting at the table with Lila, hunched over in concentration with his glasses sliding halfway down his nose, eyes focused on the watch that she’d demanded he look at. He was half-thinking that maybe this was the week he would finally get off his ass and call Natasha.

That was when his perfect calm had gone to hell.

It was Laura who had yelled first, a terrified, shrill scream that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget. He’d dropped the watch as if he’d been shot, torn off his glasses, and had made it to the living room just in time to find Cooper turning to ash (literally, there was no other way to describe it, and that was saying something considering he’d seen a lot of otherworldly things in his life), with Laura still screaming in horror. As he reached out to grab her, she began to disappear, and Clint had barely a second to process what was going on before she was gone. He’d nearly tripped over the rug and fallen over trying to get back to Lila, who was still sitting at the table, staring at her hands as they turned to dust.

“Daddy?” she asked in a terrified voice as her hands and arms and torso turned to a speckled fine powder, and Clint had watched helplessly as his daughter disappeared in front of him.

He had ran haphazardly to the phone, punching in the number to both Natasha’s personal and private cell phone. Each one rang multiple times before going straight to voicemail, and he kept calling despite receiving the same response over and over. Clint’s head felt like it was a pile of the same ash that his family had turned into; there were no thoughts or ideas and there was no momentum to grab onto that might jumpstart some kind of response to this horror. Deep down, he knew that he should _want_ to fight back to this -- he should be out the door already, on a rampage letting out his grief and anger -- but in truth, he didn’t feel anything but defeat.

As if sensing something was terribly wrong, Lucky had wandered to where Clint had slumped to the floor, putting his large wet nose in Clint’s lap and resting his head on his leg. Clint had wanted to laugh, because of course his dog was the only part of his family that he had been left with.

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of loud crying from upstairs, and he had bolted upright half in panic and half in relief, taking the stairs two at a time until he reached Nate’s room. The baby was standing in the crib crying helplessly, his face a miserable picture of fear and unhappiness, tear tracks dotting his plump cheeks. But he was alive, real and whole and not ash, and the sense of comfort that had poured through Clint’s bones in that moment had been overwhelming.

He picked up his son and cuddled him gently, trying to soothe his crying by singing softly to him and tickling the more sensitive parts of his stomach. Lucky wrapped around Clint’s legs, rubbing against his knees, and Clint hugged his son more tightly as a sense of calm drifted through him. It wasn’t a calm that he was happy about, or one that made him feel better. But at least it was a feeling that was helping him level out.

Nathaniel’s cries eventually tapered off into tiny sniffles, and Clint tried not to dwell on the deafening silence (it wasn’t silent five minutes ago because his family was here, happy and present and not _gone_.) Shifting the baby in his arms, he had walked into his bedroom with Lucky trailing on his heels and sat down at the desk in the closet. Putting Nate on his lap and ignoring the baby’s instinct to grab everything within arms reach, Clint let his son pull a stack of papers towards him, causing old receipts to flutter to the floor along with a slew of old passports, some photographs, burner phones, and ripped envelopes.

Clint continued to make his own mess, digging out reports and running his eyes over names, trying to determine if any of them would be helpful in figuring out where to even start. His eyes burned with tiredness and after half an hour of nothing, he moved a squirming Nate to the bed so that he could clean up the mess they’d both made. A piece of paper had caught his eye; his eyes had watered when he realized it was one of Cooper’s homework assignments that he had asked Clint to look over a few weeks ago.

_For example, the television conference in Wakanda showed that it’s good to have allies in other parts of the world._

He’d caught a stray sentence of his son’s writing and his brain had jumpstarted, Natasha’s voice ringing through his mind as clearly as if she was standing next to him.

_“Look, if things ever really go south...go to Wakanda. I promise you'll be safe there."_

He’d gotten up from the desk, grabbed a bag from underneath the bed, and thrown a pile of clothes inside. He’d packed a smaller bag for Nate, quickly checked that everything in the house was good to leave for an extended period of time, then strapped Nate into his car seat, helped Lucky climb into the backseat next to him, and driven off down the road.

“Clint?”

Hannah had opened the front door a few minutes later, frowning at the sight of Clint holding Nate in one arm and Lucky’s purple leash in the other.

“Hannah.” He’d tried to peer around his neighbor's door. “Is Dave here?”

For a few tense seconds, there was a long pause. Then Hannah’s face had morphed into one of confusion.

“Yes,” Hannah had answered. “He’s watching TV. We were just thinking about dinner...where’s Laura? Do you want to come in?”

Clint had stood on the stoop in silence, wondering what to say. Hannah was one of the only people in their life who knew about Clint and Laura and Natasha being more than friends, but she didn’t know about their jobs. If her husband had disappeared the same way Laura and Cooper and Lila did, that would have been one thing, a shared confusion he’d try to explain. But as much as he knew Hannah might have to deal with things happening to her friends and family, Clint didn’t want to be the one to tell her what was going on. Hell, _he_ didn’t even know what was going on. He just knew he had to get to Natasha and find out whether she was still alive or not, and he couldn’t do it from here.

“I need you to take care of Lucky and Nate for a little bit,” he said, handing over the small bag. “Something came up and it’s...kind of an emergency. I’m sorry --”

“Clint, of course.” Hannah reached out and took the leash from Clint’s hand, cutting him off. “Besides, you know we’ll always take another dog in this house. A baby is just a bonus.”

Clint had managed to smile and hugged Nathaniel as he whispered goodbye in his ear. Nate had looked at his father curiously and grinned and giggled, pulling at his ear, unaware that something was going to change. In that moment, Clint couldn’t decide if this was better or worse -- having his youngest son disappear into oblivion or having to leave him alone when he was supposed to be done leaving his family behind because of something involving work.

He drove away and he felt like he wanted to drive off the road. In the present, under the hot Wakandan sun, a new wave of feelings were spiraling out of his memories, fueling his anger and leaving him burned and hoarse and exhausted.

“I know you’re here!” His voice sounds like it’s been cut up by barbs of sharp wire, but he doesn’t care. He slams his hands against the hologrammed wall again; there must be energy surging -- it seems like that kind of place, anyway -- but even though his hands are getting bruised, he can’t feel a damn thing. “I _know_ someone is in here! I swear to god, you better let me in, you better --”

“Clint.”

He stops yelling as his eyes focus on Natasha: bleach blonde, looking like she’s gone through hell, but _alive_. His breaths start coming out in panicked anxiety gasps as his brain struggles to understand what he’s forced himself to keep believing -- that even though his family is mostly gone, he still has Natasha.

“Clint.”

The barrier he’s hitting suddenly vanishes. He stumbles forward and Natasha catches him, propping him up. She grabs his face with both of her hands.

“Clint, look at me.”

He feels like he can barely focus, but somehow, he manages to meet her eyes. She locks into his gaze, her presence whole and warm and real, and the fight and anger bleed out of him as if she’s cut a nerve.

“Tasha?”

Natasha thumbs his cheek, and a single tear slips down her face. “Oh, Clint.”

 

***

 

Okoye is kind enough to put Clint up in one of the small spare rooms in the medical center, and Natasha stays at a distance, watching as he’s fussed over from behind the safety of a glass barrier.

“He was not in good shape,” Okoye reveals as she exits the room. “Dehydrated. Half-starving. He did not even know where he was. Hopefully he will be better when he wakes up.” She looks at Natasha and eyes her warily. “I am trusting that you do know him like you say, though I do not know how things can get any worse right now.”

“I told you, I know him,” Natasha snaps, before she catches herself. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, trying to temper her anger and worry. “Thank you.”

Okoye nods and casts another glance at Clint before walking off to, Natasha presumes, figure out what else she needs to do in the wake of everything going to hell. T’Challa was gone, but who else? How many other people had they lost, not just in Wakanda but all over?

“Your friend is lucky he found us,” Shuri says as she steps up beside Natasha, taking Okoye’s place. “How are you?”

Natasha realizes she might not know how to answer that question for a long time. “Surviving,” she decides, turning to look at the Wakandan princess who before now she’d only exchanged a few words with prior to a huge, life-changing battle. “How are _you_?”

“I’ve been better.” Shuri looks pale, shaken, and a little dazed. “They say my brother is dead.”

Natasha doesn’t quite know what to say to that, because she’s still having a hard time quantifying everyone who has disappeared as _dead_ \-- aside from Vision, she can’t think of anyone as truly gone.

“I don’t think anyone is dead,” she says finally. “They’re just gone, and we need to figure out how to fix it.”

Shuri shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. I am the queen now. I think.” She looks even more pale as she says the words, but keeps her posture intact and her voice steady in a way that impresses Natasha -- who had only been this poised at sixteen because she had started killing people and going undercover at ten. “At least, that’s what I have been told in the past twenty-four hours.”

“Twenty-four hours?” Natasha stares at her in shock. “What are you talking about? It’s been maybe two hours since everything happened.”

Shuri shakes her head. “No. It only feels like that. Whatever happened with the time stone that you were talking about, it must have created a temporary loop that slowed down time itself. What felt to us like fifteen minutes was to everyone else at least a day. Time is now resetting, according to what I have been able to calculate.”

 _Twenty-four hours_. So it was entirely possible Clint had been out there traveling and not eating and going crazy for more than a day, if Shuri’s words were right. Natasha suddenly feels like she’s the one who might be sick, and swallows down a bout of nausea.

“Shuri.”

Shuri and Natasha turn to see Okoye standing at the end of the hallway, looking annoyed. Shuri rolls her eyes and it makes Natasha smile -- a little bit of normalcy in the middle of a strange and grieving world -- and then Shuri turns around and walks away, leaving Natasha alone.

There are a few Wakandans walking around but minimal activity otherwise, and whether that’s from Thanos or just because of the general mood that’s fallen over the kingdom, Natasha doesn’t know. But the entire situation feels so much like Clint’s post Raft experience that she wants to punch something. That had been bad enough, the waiting and the knowledge that she had to tell him he had lost his hearing in the rescue. She’d had T’Challa then, and, to an extent, she’d had Laura. Even if Natasha couldn’t talk to her, she knew she was there, like a silent guiding force.

Anger and apologies from her most recent disappearance aside, Natasha feels even more alone when she realizes she has no idea if Laura is still here.

“Nat.”

She closes her eyes as Steve approaches, attempting to pull herself together.

“Yeah.”

“I’m trying to round everyone up,” Steve says, sounding tired. “I need to figure out who’s still alive and who didn’t --” He stops suddenly and Natasha knows he’s looked past her shoulder and seen Clint lying in the room in front of her.

“Holy shit.”

Natasha smiles wryly and turns around, meeting Steve’s shocked face.

“Is he okay?”

“He’ll be fine,” Natasha lies, hoping she sounds confident enough to ward off any other questions Steve might be thinking of asking, like how he got here or why he’s here at all. “I just need some time alone with him.”

Steve nods slowly. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, of course. I mean, if you need anything --”

Natasha shakes her head. “I’ll handle Barton. You just...take care of yourself. I think we need you right now.” Natasha swallows hard, thinking of Shuri and Okoye. “Wakanda lost their king.”

“And we just...lost.”

In all her years of avenging, even with their personal missions and things like Hydra and Bucky and the Accords, Natasha doesn’t think she’s ever heard Steve sound so defeated. She reaches out before she can stop herself, pulling him into a hug. As much as she hadn’t wanted anyone around until this moment, she realizes how grateful she is that Steve of all people had survived this along with her. Steve was still here. Clint was still here. She still had people who she could count on, even if she felt alone and lost. Maybe there was some kind of hope hidden somewhere.

“Natasha.”

Natasha pulls away from the hug and steps back.

“Do you know if they’re okay? His family?”

Natasha feels like she’s been punched in the gut, because she knows that there’s no way Clint would have shown up here looking like the mess he did if something hadn’t happened to at least one person at the farm. Whether it was all of them, whether it was just one of them...that she didn’t know. He could have easily left Cooper and Nathaniel and Lila at a neighbor’s house. He could’ve even left Laura at home because it was too dangerous to travel, and maybe everyone she loved really did make it out alive and she was worrying for nothing.

Maybe not.

“I guess we’ll find out.”

 

**2016**

 

By the time Clint has pulled himself out of bed, shoved in his hearing aids, brushed his teeth, and made himself look a little less like a hobo, he’s missed most of the morning routine. Lucky is sleeping at the bottom of the stairs and Clint steps over him _and_ the baby gate, silently congratulating himself for not falling over. A quick glance out the large bay windows that stretch across the living room shows that Lila is outside, and Clint can tell by the glowing light of the baby monitor that Nate is probably sleeping. Laura is standing at the counter with a cup of coffee in one hand, flipping through a worn, ear-marked cookbook.

“Sorry,” he apologizes to the quiet room. He rubs his head and then his chin, scratching his beard as he yawns. “You could’ve woken me up.”

“I _could_ have,” Laura agrees, turning around and smiling at him. “But you looked really cute, so I decided to let you sleep. Besides, it’s only eight.”

“Eight might as well be noon in this house,” Clint points out. “And where’s Coop?”

“Soccer, as usual,” Laura responds. “It’s Saturday, remember?”

It is, he realizes a beat too late, and he should’ve realized that when he woke up and Lila was still running around. Clint walks forward, putting his arms around Laura’s waist, nuzzling her hair. Laura’s posture, which has been stiff and concentrated, relaxes as Clint starts cuddling her.

“Sorry,” he murmurs when she finally turns around after putting down her coffee and abandoning her book. “Dad brain.”

Laura smiles back. “I forgive you.”

He lets himself have a moment of this -- kissing her, holding her, indulging in a measure of stolen intimacy that’s quiet and unheard of now that Nate was old enough to cause a pointed ruckus. When he finally tears himself away to get breakfast, he notices that Laura’s the only one in the kitchen.

“Where’s Nat?”

Laura’s almost gone back to her cookbook but looks up again at Clint’s words. “At the shooting range. She was getting antsy.”

Clint pours some cereal. “We sparred a few days ago. Guess that wasn’t enough.”

Laura shrugs. “She wanted to shoot,” she says in a practical voice, but Clint knows it’s more than that. Natasha could spar all day and practice hand-to-hand combat on everything from a tree to a punching bag; her and Clint had been taking to the barn for years to unleash their aggression or keep themselves in shape while they were at home. But there was only much they could do in the barn, and Laura would kill someone before she let either of them use weapons near the house. Even Cooper’s archery interest was done under Clint’s careful eyes.

“Well, whatever she wants,” Clint says, stretching out and sticking his legs wide under the table. “I’ve got some things to finish around the house today but if no one is shooting or cooking later, I thought maybe we could check out that new barbeque place down the road.”

Laura nods. “That’s fine,” she says, putting a fresh cup of coffee down next to him. Clint passes her a grateful smile and takes a few bites of cereal, just as the door opens followed by Lila’s tell-tale steps.

“I swear to god,” Clint mutters which is the only thing he manages to get out before his daughter runs into the room, throwing her arms around his waist and knocking the spoon from his hand.

“Daddy, come see! We found another friend!”

He doesn’t miss Laura’s smirk as Lila lets go of his waist and grabs the ends of his flannel shirt, tugging hard, trying to drag Clint across the floor. He attempts to grab his coffee as he dutifully follows, but before he can figure out how he’s going to take the large porcelain mug without spilling it all over himself, a large travel mug is shoved into his hands, the top tightly sealed and smelling of strong roasted hazelnut.

“Bless you for this marriage,” he says under his breath as Laura hums proudly. A few seconds later he’s outside, standing on the porch, blinking in the semi-sweet cold air and blue sky.

It was easy -- too easy, sometimes -- to remember that only a few months ago, he had been in prison, rescued, treated for total hearing loss, and forced to adjust to a life where he constantly worried about about people coming after his family. He’d settled into the role of retired father like a well-worn glove, better than he ever thought he would, which was partially because there was nothing going on to grab his attention. Steve and Sam had taken up some small off the grid missions, and Tony had been suspiciously quiet. Wanda had moved from her safehouse in Oregon to overseas in Scotland, where Vision had promised to take care of her. So far, check-ins had confirmed Ross was off her tail the same way he was off everyone else’s.

He’s not surprised that he feels more comfortable than he has in years given how little has been going on. He is, however, surprised that Natasha has fallen into the same easy lifestyle. Clint had worried that even though there really _was_ no “next mission,” she would find a reason to leave despite her years of promise that she now belonged to this family - by rings, by vows, and by fierce loyalty. But aside from some visits to see Wanda and meet up with Fury, Natasha had stayed committed. She had been there for the school plays, school pick-ups, and even the midnight sex.

“Daddy, the _snake_!”

Clint’s startled out of his thoughts by Lila thrusting her hands towards him.

“Oh…”

Clint fights an urge to grimace as the squirming snake is shoved into his palms. He tries to think fast, knowing there are few things Laura would appreciate less than being handed a living reptile. “Your friend is very nice, but I think he needs to go back to the garden,” he says gently, nodding towards Laura’s small patch of flowers. “He probably needs to be with his own mommy, and you don’t want him to be lonely, right?”

Lila shakes her head, and Clint moves the snake back into his daughter’s hands. She puts it down in the grass.

“Bye Mr. Snake,” Lila says cheerily, waving as it slithers away. “Say hi to your mommy for me!”

Clint smiles and pushes the sleeves of his flannel up his elbows, smearing dirt across his arms. “Speaking of mommies, I think yours wants to see you before you become a sun bug. Let’s get you washed up and then we’ll get dressed for the day, yeah?”

He picks her up easily with one arm, carrying her towards the house, and deposits her on the living room floor once he’s inside. She disappears up the stairs after Clint has nudged her and opened the baby gate, and he walks into the kitchen to find it empty. Judging by the loud cries coming from upstairs, he figures Laura’s gone to take care of Nate. He takes it upon himself to do some dishes, at least until he’s inevitably chastised for not doing his part of responsibly taking care of his child.

His chores remain uninterrupted, however, and so he figures he’s safe to start doing other serious housekeeping. He pulls a stack of recently paid bills from Laura’s overflowing desk drawer as well as the checkbook, trying to remember the last time they actually balanced the thing. He’s just poured himself another cup of coffee when he hears soft footsteps approaching the kitchen, and he smiles to himself.

“About time,” he says, looking up and expecting Natasha. Laura’s standing in the archway, and he can tell by the look on her face that there’s something serious she needs to tell him.

“What’s up?” he asks in a low voice. Laura takes a deep breath as Nate sticks two fingers into his mouth, drooling onto the shirt that’s barely stretching over his chubby stomach.

“Tony’s here.”

“What?” Clint drops the pen he’s been holding. “ _Here_?”

“Outside,” Laura confirms, shifting Nate to her other arm. “He’s on the porch. He didn’t want to come in.” Her face suggests that she’s not sure whether or not she should be concerned about this, and Clint puts his lips in two straight lines.

“I’ll handle it.”

He kisses her as he gets up, now noticing Tony’s silhouette from the window. He’s suddenly grateful that he’s grabbed his coffee; having something to hold saves him from striding to the door and outright losing it thanks to a build-up of tension and worry. He finds himself thankful that Natasha isn’t back yet; not that Tony would blink at the fact she’d be at the farm, but he certainly might if she showed up with a grocery list and in Laura’s old sweatpants.

“Hi.”

Tony turns around and smiles -- at least, as much as Clint thinks he can smile when he’s not actively enjoying himself somewhere social. “Hi yourself.”

Clint gestures to the farm. “Sure you don’t wanna come in? Coffee’s still hot. Or I could make you a mimosa.”

Tony shakes his head. Clint shrugs, taking another sip of coffee. “Your loss.” He puts his cup down on the porch ledge, and they both lapse into silence. Clint wonders how long they can stay like this, clearly avoiding what needs to be said while also recognizing that this is the first time they’ve seen each other since the Raft.

 _At least it’s my turf_ , Clint thinks warily. If anything, he had a right to be guarded at his own home.

“Laura looks good.”

Clint wants to laugh, because Tony’s pitiful offering of a compliment as if they haven’t been pulled apart, slapped around, and fucked over in ways that might have damaged their lives forever is so classically Tony, he could have predicted it if he cared to.

“She’s okay,” Clint replies. “The kids are keeping her busy. Nathaniel is going through some sleep problems, so she’s been taking a lot of that responsibility at night.” He pauses, trying to figure out how to keep the conversation going in a way that seems casual. “How’s everything with you?”

“Fine,” Tony says cryptically. Although his voice sounds tight, like there’s something he’s trying to hide, his face doesn’t hold any sign of visible fear. “Keeping things running with Miss Potts in New York, and working on some new suits. You’re okay?”

“As okay as I can be,” Clint says, leaning against one of the porch banisters. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

Tony nods. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s what I’m asking.”

“Well, then, yeah,” Clint says. “We’re okay.” He sees a little bit of relief in Tony’s eyes, the lines around his mouth evening out as if he’s been reassured of something. Clint suspects he probably has, at least when it comes to his own conscience.

“Hey, look,” Clint says after they lapse into another awkward pause. “I’m all for small talk, but we haven’t seen each other since the airport shitshow, so I feel like there’s a reason that you’re randomly here after all these months. Wanna just tell me why?”

Tony smiles. “Same old Barton,” he says, nodding his head along with his words. “You know, if it wasn’t for your wife, I’d still think you and Nat were boning. You both manage to read me in five seconds.”

Clint bites down on his tongue, grateful for the fact that he’s perfected his poker face. “Yeah, well. I haven’t spent fifteen years in a marriage for nothing.”

Tony sighs. “Look, there’s no easy way to say this, but the reason I’m here is because I need to talk to you. It’s about Ross.”

A chill rips through Clint’s body, as if someone has replaced his blood with ice-cold water. His vision clouds and his ears ring; his stomach churns and the fear courses through him as his mind races thinking about who he might have to protect first -- Laura, Nathaniel, Cooper, Lila. Just as soon as his parent instincts take over, his agent instincts kick in, and he calms himself by allowing his brain to focus on the rational part of the situation.

“I’m confused,” he says, narrowing his eyes and settling on Tony’s goatee. He thinks there’s more gray there and almost says something, but he realizes it’s likely that someone could say the same about him. However old Tony was getting, Clint wasn’t that far behind. “You sent us that letter saying that you had cleared us, that we were okay as long as we weren’t doing any Avengers stuff.”

“I know,” Tony says with a grimace. “And you were. I mean, you are. This is something else. Ross is getting antsy. I think…I mean, he can’t find anyone --”

“Of course he can’t,” Clint interrupts. “Because we’re all trying _not_ to be found, considering we broke out of jail.”

“Which, like I’m saying, is a problem for him.” Tony holds up his hands, his voice sliding into a placating tone. “He was okay for awhile, but now he needs something to focus on. He doesn’t like thinking that he’s lost. So I stepped in and I made a deal.”

Clint arches an eyebrow. “What kind of deal?”

“Well, maybe not a deal as much as a promise...a suggestion,” he hurries on. “That to protect your family, you and Lang would stay under house arrest, which you already seem to be doing.”

“But that’s not why you’re here,” Clint says slowly. “Because since I haven't been avenging in awhile, you _know_ that I’m not leaving. So you’re here to tell me that I can’t pull off what I did when I went to help Wanda. In order for my family to stay safe, I have to _forcibly_ retire.”

“Aren’t you retired now?” Tony asks bluntly. "I really don’t see how what I’m asking is a game changer, Barton."

“There's retired and there's _retired_ ,” Clint says, instead of responding with the retort he _wants_ to answer with. “And what you're telling me is that if something terrible happens, I don't have a choice in the matter. Because now my family is at stake more than ever, and so my hands are tied worse than they ever were when I was just trying to keep them off the grid.”

“I know it's hard for you to believe, but no one worries about shit happening more than me,” Tony says, looking frustrated. "It's true. I've got Pepper, I’m trying to make a life and finally settle down and be done with...with all of this.” He gestures widely to the sky. “I don't want to be running around putting out fires anymore. But I can't stop protecting the world, and I know how this feels.”

“I bet you ten bucks you don't,” Clint snaps. “Because you're a fucking public figure, Stark. You're not a homebody with three kids and a wife. You might want a life out of the spotlight and you also want to protect people you love, yeah, I'm sure you do. But don't even try to pretend that you get my situation or know what it feels like to be in my shoes. Because you damn well _never_ will.”

Tony rubs his eyes for so long, Clint thinks he might end up blind.

“Just take the deal, Clint. Please.”

“And if I don’t?”

Tony blows out a frustrated breath. “Look, you’re the one who did this to yourself. You were all hidden away, no one would have known about your secret life --”

“And where were you supposed to go, Stark?” Clint’s furious now, his face heating up and his words flying out faster than he can control them. Somewhere in his brain, he thinks he should tone it down in case Laura is listening, in case Cooper came home, in case Natasha came home, but he keeps talking anyway. “Should I have left everyone in that freighter? You were all compromised, and I brought you here because there was _nowhere_ else for us to go. Because that’s what you do as part of a team, you step up and you protect the people you care about. So yeah, I exposed my family and my secret, and I knew the dangers that came with that. But I would’ve never expected that I’d get jailed by the government for choosing the wrong side in a petty fight and then have to worry about my wife and children’s survival!”

Tony falls silent. Clint knows he should feel bad for his outburst, but he doesn’t. _You deserve it_ , he thinks angrily, grabbing his coffee. And technically it was a lie anyway; the only reason he’d even considered bringing everyone home was because Natasha had been so far gone that she’d requested it and she had wanted to feel safe.

"You shouldn’t have been in there in the first place," Tony says finally. "The Raft. You're not superpowered. You're not…”

“I’m not you,” Clint finishes, trying not to feel stung. Tony sighs.

“I tried to fix this, to get them to help protect you. Because I messed up. I know I did. And people got punished for what I said and what I did, and I’m just trying to make it better, okay? Can you let me try to offer that?”

Clint puts his hands on the railing and lets his fingers curl around the newly painted rail. He takes a few deep breaths, letting the farm air fill his lungs.

“I can let you offer me that, but I can’t forgive you,” Clint says, turning to face Tony. “I’m sorry. I can be less angry, and I can put things aside if we’re in trouble, but I can’t just...forgive you. Not yet.”

“If I didn’t say that was fair, I’d be lying.” Tony pauses, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I know you don’t want to take the deal, Clint. But think about it. I’m just trying to help.”

Clint picks up his coffee and takes a long drink, trying to figure out what to say. “You sure you don’t want to come in?” he asks. “It’s a long trip back to New York. Laura can make you something to eat. Kids might not even bother you.”

Tony smiles. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve got my own ride.” He tips his chin to the sky, where Clint can just barely make out a small quinjet uncloaking itself as it lowers to the ground some yards away, behind the big tree. “Take care of yourself, Barton. Might be the last time we see each other.”

“I highly doubt that,” Clint says with an eye roll. He puts his hand on Tony’s arm. “You could’ve called.”

“Yeah,” Tony agrees. “I could have. But I’d rather say all this in person. I owe you that.”

Clint considers this and finds himself smiling. “Yeah, you kinda do,” he decides as Tony smiles back. He steps away, walking down the porch and into the grass, towards the quinjet that’s hovering and humming.

Clint takes another sip of coffee, watching as the quinjet rises into the sky, disappearing into the clouds. He waits until the world is quiet again, until his aids alert him to his daughter running down the stairs and his baby is crying, before he returns inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really didn't mean to take this long to update, but UGH real life. I'm making up for it with a chapter on the longer end, and my aim is to post an update every two weeks, the schedule I normally use when I post in this series. And thank you to @spectralarchers for your brainstorm help with part of this chapter!


	3. Chapter 3

**2016**

 

Even after everything -- after all the years of acclimation -- there are still things about this life that are strange to Natasha, like the fact that she regularly drives a truck around Iowa as if she’s some sort of suburban mom.

Technically, Laura would argue she is, and even though there’s a part of Natasha that wants to refute that, the thought makes her smile. Clint spent years joking about how she was becoming domesticated, but Laura never pushed her to feel comfortable one way or the other. The one exception to that rule had been Cooper and Lila; even then she had let Natasha settle into what worked for her, despite the fact that what “worked” sometimes was running off and being less present than both of them would have preferred.

As Natasha drives home from the shooting range, she realizes that everything around her -- a road, a tree, a sound -- seems to carry a memory. Good and bad, everything that surrounds her is a hard reminder of how long she’s worked to love the two people who let her walk through the door of a home they bought and cultivated well before she was in the picture. Sometimes it’s hard to remember how long it’s all been, and the only way she’s able to really step back and reflect is by cataloging time in physical things -- Nate’s growing clothes, Lila’s increased vocabulary, Laura and Clint’s grey hairs, Cooper’s deepening voice.

Cooper’s the one who Natasha finds herself the most shaken by, when she stops to think about how long she’s been a part of this family. He’d barely been a year old when Natasha had met Clint and sometimes, on days like today -- when she’s walking up to the house and breathing in the heavy, stagnant air inherent of an oncoming rainstorm -- she has to double take at the acknowledgement of how she’s watched Clint’s son go from crying baby to confused and playful toddler to competent, moody, near teen. The only thing that makes this passage of time a little easier to stomach is the fact that Cooper is still on the small side for his age. Combined with his youthful features, Natasha can still believe, if she chooses, that he’s every bit the young child she’d known for so many years.

“How was practice?” Natasha asks as she approaches the house. Cooper swings his legs off the porch where he’s been relaxing and smiles. His boyish grin is almost an exact replica of Clint’s, albeit a little less crooked and a little more smug, and it’s another thing that strikes Natasha from time to time -- things like the fact that she had met Clint when she was barely of legal drinking age, and although he seemed so much older than her, he was only in his 20’s himself.

“Pretty good.” Cooper stands up, dusting dirt off his pants. “Coach said that he thinks I’m gonna be able to play _all_ the playoff games next week. Isn’t that awesome? You and dad can be there to watch and I’ll finally get to show off my new tricks!”

Natasha smiles back and rubs his shoulder. “How’s your leg strength when you kick?”

Cooper grins wickedly. “I tried that new move you told me about -- I kicked the ball so hard, it almost got Coach Leahy in the stomach!”

Natasha can almost feel Laura’s strict parenting glare staring her down, a feeling not unlike knowing that there’s some deity looking down from above -- someone who you never see but who you know is always watching.

“Don’t overuse that move,” Natasha warns, giving him a quick hug. “Or I’ll never be allowed to help with any of your practices again.”

“Isn’t that the move that dad said put him out of commission when you were practicing together?”

“Yes,” Natasha admits as Cooper muffles a laugh. “Coop -- _Coop_. I’m serious. It’s not funny. And he wasn’t really hurt, he was just being moody.”

Cooper sobers, but the mirth in his eyes tells Natasha that he thinks it’s entirely funny. Natasha can’t really blame him, because god knows she’s had her fair share of laughter at Clint’s whining. She leaves Cooper on the porch as she walks inside, and has about a second of preparation before Lila leaps forward from her spot on the couch and runs into Natasha’s arms.

“You smell funny,” Lila informs her over the loud singing of _Cinderella_ , and Natasha bites down on a sarcastic laugh. Clint always joked about how the smell of gunpowder residue was sexy, but Natasha figures that doesn’t translate quite as well to a seven year old.

“ _You_ smell funny,” Natasha trades as she puts Lila down, catching Clint and Laura sitting in the kitchen. It wasn’t exactly unusual for both of them to be sitting around in the middle of the day, especially on a weekend and especially if their kids were home. But Natasha’s spy senses immediately put her on guard because despite their casual stances, something about the way they’re sitting seems off.

“Hey, after your movie’s over, wanna get our book and we’ll do some reading?”

“Yeah!” Lila’s face lights up. “And mommy’s making sammiches for lunch and I get to have cookies, too!”

Natasha smiles as Lila walks back to the couch, curling up next to Lucky again and burying her face in his fur. She continues into the kitchen, and when she comes into full view of Clint and Laura she notices that although they’re sitting together, they’re not talking. Laura is holding Nate in her arms, bouncing him gently while singing softly to him. Clint is fingering an open Corona, condensation sweating off the bottle and onto his hands.

“Nat-Nat! Nat-Nat!” Nate cries out exuberantly when Natasha comes into view. Laura fights to hold him steady as Natasha passes, heading to the fridge.

“Who threw themselves off the roof?” Natasha asks as she takes out a container of iced tea. She turns around just in time to see Laura and Clint exchange glances.

“Okay,” Natasha continues slowly, pouring herself a large glass and walking over to sit down at the table. “I’m good enough at this to know that something’s up. Plus, you’re day-drinking, which you hardly ever do when the kids are home. So you wanna tell me what’s going on before I start interrogating you?”

Clint sighs and sits back in his chair, grabbing his drink off the table. “Tony came by.”

Out of all the things Natasha’s expected to hear that might have caused this clearly tension filled moment, those words were nowhere on her radar. She puts her glass down sharply on the table.

“What?”

“Nat!” Nate repeats loudly in a high-pitched voice, and Laura shushes him quietly.

“He came to the house,” Clint says, sounding tired but not overly worried. “This morning, while you were out. He came to tell us that he apparently made a deal with the government on our behalf.”

“What kind of deal?” Natasha asks, trying to keep her voice low in case Lila decides to walk into the room. “We got those papers. And Laura’s dad had the records modified. I mean, it’s been months...we’re fine, right?”

“We’re fine,” Clint repeats, and although he’s still speaking softly there’s a serious tone that Natasha knows is him telling him the truth. “I guess he made a deal with Ross that in order to keep my family safe and not have anyone on my back, I’d go under house arrest.”

Natasha snorts, thankful she hasn’t taken a sip of her drink yet, because otherwise the moment would have probably been ruined by her spewing iced tea out of her mouth and nose. “Because you’re not already doing that.”

“That’s his point,” Clint replies. “But yeah, that means no avenging, no getting back into the fight if there’s anything to get back into...no getting on anyone’s radar, really. It’s what I’ve been doing already, but I guess now there’s just a hard stamp on it. The kind of stamp that Ross is going to bank on me breaking, because we all know the world is gonna continue to go to sh -- something bad,” he finishes as Laura glares pointedly over Nathaniel’s tiny head.

Natasha falls quiet, pulling on the sleeves of her Iowa State sweatshirt, her mind throwing ten questions into her mouth all at once.

“Lang?”

“Same deal, as far as I know. And he’ll take it. I mean, he’d never do anything that could compromise his daughter.”

“So what does that mean for us?” Natasha asks, taking a long gulp of her iced tea. It’s chilled and cold and it tastes like summer, like sun and warmth and barbeque and children’s laughter on the swings.

Laura clears her throat quietly, adjusting a now quiet Nathaniel on one knee. “I think you’re asking, what does that mean for _you_?”

Natasha’s caught off guard by Laura’s question, because until Laura says the words out loud, she realizes there’s more to this than Clint feeling uneasy because he’d been paid an unexpected visit. This was, potentially, the beginning of a divide. A divide that seemed destined to put yet another wedge into Natasha attempting to live a life that always seemed a little too perfect and a little too messy, but also always seemed to be what she needed and wanted.

And suddenly, Laura’s sullen mood makes a little more sense, and Natasha wants to kick herself for not seeing it at the beginning. Of course Natasha always had the option of not being 100%, even if even if she wanted to be. But if someone needed to go and take the call, Natasha couldn’t _not_ go. One of them had to keep working, and that person had always been Natasha more than Clint, even during his early SHIELD days but especially throughout their relationship. Because Natasha _could_ go more easily. Because Natasha didn’t _have_ stringent commitments the same way Clint. Clint had gone to help Wanda because he’d had a debt to repay and both Laura and Natasha had understood that, but now Clint’s hands were tied a little too tight.

Natasha’s weren’t, though.

“Can we have lunch?” Natasha asks, instead of answering Laura’s question. “I haven’t eaten since this morning, and I’m starving.”

Clint nods and holds his hands out. Nate squirms uneasily as Laura hands him over the table.

“Clint, I need you to finish folding the laundry,” Laura says in a no nonsense voice as she gets up and walks to the fridge, taking out bread and meat. “Nat, can you handle Nate for a bit? I think he needs to be changed soon.”

The baby grins as he’s placed into Natasha’s arms, delightedly pulling at her overgrown red hair. In an instant, by some miracle, the house has slid back into what Natasha has always known it to be -- a warm and happy and inviting place, a safe haven for feelings and emotions and words where everything felt, for the most part, painfully normal.

Natasha cuddles Nate more tightly, pressing the baby’s soft head against her chest.

 

***

 

Painting the new study is probably not the most productive thing to do at five in the morning, Clint realizes, and he takes a moment to be proud of himself for recognizing that fact even as he spreads another thin layer of light blue down the wall. But painting had beat the alternative, which was staring at the wall while the gnawing feeling in his stomach grew bigger by the hour. A refusal to put in his hearing aids meant that instead of hearing Nathaniel’s snoring over the baby monitor or the dog’s snoring at the edge of the bed, he had nothing to think about except his own thoughts in the heavy, weighted silence.

So he had rolled carefully out of bed (a feat unto itself given that there were usually two other people sleeping in it), grabbed his aids, made his way downstairs, and located the can of paint Laura had picked up on her way home from the store a few days ago. With light flooding the small remodeled room, his hands in a constant up and down motion, and his concentration fixated on making sure each smear was clean and neat, he’d managed to push the unwanted sensation of nerves away enough so that he wasn’t entirely distracted by them.

“I wasn’t aware that we hired a midnight contractor,” says a quiet voice, and Clint turns to see Natasha staring at him. She runs a hand through her hair, shaking it out. “You couldn’t sleep?”

“What gave it away?” Clint asks, because at this point in their relationship it’s moot to argue or pretend when something’s wrong. Besides, if Natasha didn’t get it out of him, Laura would.

Natasha remains silent and Clint eyes her carefully as he drags the roller down the wall with a long sigh.

“I don’t have all night. Spit it out, Nat.”

“Fine,” Natasha says shortly, and Clint doesn’t know why she even pretended to start a conversation if she was ready to jump on him, anyway. “I can’t believe that you didn’t fight Tony on his deal.”

Clint puts down his roller and turns around. “What did you want me to do, Nat? The deal was already _done_. He basically came to say that I had no choice in the matter. I gave him a piece of my mind, I told him I wasn’t ready to forgive him from the Raft -- I wasn’t exactly a damn pushover, okay? But the deal was already _made_ , so what was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know!” Natasha responds, half whispering and half yelling, her voice pulled taut like a rope stretched thin in a tug-of-war. “Push back or explain your situation...you were supposed to do _something_!”

“You know as well as I do that I couldn’t push back like that,” Clint hisses, keeping his voice steady. “Laura’s always come first. My family has _always_ come first.”

“Right, except where adopted Avengers are concerned,” Natasha points out. Clint grits his teeth because Natasha pulling the Wanda card wasn’t just low, it was uncalled for.

“Yeah, well, at least when Captain America called me for help I didn’t drop everything to get back into the fight and I actually thought about it,” he retorts. Natasha’s eyes narrow in anger, and he takes the brief moment of silence to barrel on. “Besides, it’s not like I wasn’t already laying low. I had no ground to stand on, Nat. I’m already pretty much retired!”

“Yeah,” Natasha says bitterly. “I know. So if anything happens, it all falls on me. Again. I’m not the one under house arrest, so _I’m_ the bad guy. _I’m_ the one who tells Lila I’m here to read to her and then leaves. _I’m_ the one who looks like I don’t care that I gave you and Laura vows, that I have a fucking ring to prove that I made a commitment to his relationship. I gave you my _vows_ , Clint! And you think it’s okay to just accept that if one of us has to throw something away, it has to be me, because it’s _always_ been me!”

Clint remains quiet throughout Natasha’s tirade, even as her voice rises and crests in the space of the small room. On her last word, the wave breaks onto the shore, broken letters matching a voice riddled with unshed tears. He glances up at the ceiling, his aids not picking up crying or any sounds that might indicate his children are awake, but he still waits a moment before speaking.

“There wasn’t ever going to be a way this life worked the way we wanted it to,” Clint says, sitting down on the floor and pushing the paint roller away morosely. “We always knew that. We just tried to take it day by day, live life with the knowledge that we loved each other, that we had each other...and maybe one day it would all stop, and maybe it wouldn’t. But we still lived the way we wanted to, Nat. And that’s how I still think of us. When you’re here, you’re really here. You going away doesn’t change that, just as me going away when I was a SHIELD agent didn’t change that I was Laura’s wife. You’re not the villain of this story anymore. Not after all of this.”

Natasha looks frustrated, but Clint can see the heavy emotion manifesting in her eyes. He curls his legs up and scratches the side of his head.

“You know that Wanda’s still out there,” Natasha says.

Clint nods. “I know. But she’s been with Vision lately, and maybe…” He trails off, swallowing. “Maybe it’s not my job to protect her anymore.”

“It’ll always be someone’s job,” Natasha reminds him as she joins him on the floor, the smallest hint of a peace offering. “You never stop protecting someone just because they find someone else. Not if you care about them. You of all people should know that, Clint.”

Even if she hadn’t added those pointed last words, Clint would have laughed, because he knew there was a reason she’d said them. He finds himself reaching out and putting his arm around her shoulders, bringing her close.

Natasha instantly pushes up against his body as they settle together. He doesn’t expect to start kissing her, but it’s been awhile since they’ve shared any kind of intimacy, and so he also doesn’t stop her when she tips her head up, their lips meeting soundly. Electricity in the form of passion runs through his veins, the anger and frustration and uncertainty that’s stemmed from their conversation fusing together in a concoction that makes their kissing more intense, leading Natasha to push him back onto the floor, dangerously close to where the paint roller is lying in a pool of sticky blue.

“Probably not a great idea at five in the morning,” Natasha murmurs as she lifts her head, tucking fallen hair behind her ear. Clint nods as she meets his eyes, feeling the beginning of his erection start to fade.

“Yeah. Plus, Laura would be pissed she didn’t get any.”

Natasha smiles and gets up, extending a hand. Clint allows her to pull him to his feet and casts a quick glance at the unfinished wall before shrugging and walking out of the room. With any luck, he’d be up in at least another hour and the paint certainly wasn’t going anywhere in the meantime.

“Fucking baby gate,” Clint mutters as his shin bangs into the plastic rail while he tries to lift his leg high enough. Natasha rolls her eyes as they continue to walk upstairs.

“It was your idea to have another kid.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t my idea to have one that likes to launch himself off things like a rocket.”

“Where did you go?”

Laura’s voice is soft and sleep-worn, but she’s sitting up in bed looking confused as Clint and Natasha walk back into the room.

“Late night painting job,” Clint admits, crawling into bed.

“Late night therapy session,” Natasha adds, following suit and sandwiching herself in the middle of them.

Laura frowns. “And you didn’t invite me?”

“It wasn’t anything special,” Clint promises. “I didn’t even get my pants down. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” He leans over to kiss Laura and adjusts himself on the mattress, and Natasha shifts so that she’s comfortably nestled between them.

 _It’s all happened before_ , Clint thinks as prys the hearing aids out and dumps them on the night table. _It’ll all happen again. It’s what we’re used to_. He lets the words float in the darkness and tries to forget everything that’s happened today and what could, at this point, after so much, possibly change.

 

**2018**

 

Before Clint opens his eyes, he hears voices. They’re soft voices, but they’re also different than what he knows he’d hear at home, and he knows this because his aids alert him to heavy accents. He keeps his eyes closed, because right now, it’s easier not to open them. Besides, if he doesn’t open them, maybe he can convince himself that this whole thing really was a dream. That he didn’t abandon his nearly toddler son and his dog to run off to some hidden country because he was chasing his last hope. That he didn’t watch his wife and children disappear into thin air, like they were fading from existence.

“How are you feeling?”

Clint opens his eyes, light flooding his vision and making him feel dizzy. But Natasha’s voice is clear and firm. As it has for so many years, her words steady him enough to pause, breathe, and lift his head.

“I dunno,” he replies, attempting to sit up slowly. He makes a face at the sound of his own voice, which is raspy and dry. “I’m alive, right?”

“Yes,” Natasha says softly. “You are.”

Clint looks around, taking in his surroundings. It’s clearly a hospital room even if there’s an absence of the normal things that would make up a hospital room -- worn beeping monitors, grey walls, creaky beds. Everything here is clean and white, his bed is comfortable and soft, and the only thing that indicates he’s unwell is the IV needle stuck in the back of his palm. He’s facing a window that shows a clear blue sky, and everything seems too cheery and too bright and too happy, and something about the situation seems achingly familiar. He turns to Natasha again.

“Last time I was here, I was deaf.”

“But alive,” Natasha reminds him, brushing a finger against his forehead. “So you seem to have a good track record.”

“Alive.” Clint shudders, a chill seeping through his body and causing his limbs to vibrate uncontrollably. Natasha moves her hand to his face, resting her palm against his cheek.

“Clint, how did you get here?”

Clint squints at the window. “I remembered...that one time we were together, you said if anything went wrong, I should come to come to Wakanda because I’d be safe. I had a hunch -- I remembered that one of the field offices had a spare quinjet they would use from time to time -- I drove over there and found it. I used the coordinates you left me.” He pauses; in retrospect he knows the journey probably deserved a few more lines of explanation, but that’s not what he cares to talk about. “How are _you_ here?”

“What?” Natasha looks confused, her brows knitting together.

“How are you here? Why aren’t you dust?”

Natasha opens her mouth and then closes it slowly, as if she’s taking back what she’s planned to say. “I...I don’t know,” she admits quietly. “I don’t think any of us know.”

 _Any of us_. So that implied there were people who _didn’t_ disappear. Even though Hannah and Dave had been fine, he’d thought that whatever had happened to him was targeted, that someone had set his sights on destroying his family. But with the way Natasha’s talking, he realizes that there’s a chance that whatever had happened had affected other people, too. And if Natasha was here, Steve had to be here. If Steve was here, Vision had to be here. If Vision was here, Wanda had to --

He fumbles with the IV line. When he finds he can’t rip it out the way he’s used to because of a strong adhesive, he launches himself forward as best he can. Unsurprisingly, Natasha is by his side in an instant, pushing him back.

“Clint, what are you doing?”

“You gotta get this thing out of me,” Clint instructs, nodding towards the IV. “I need to go see who else is here.”

“Clint -- Clint, _hey_.” Natasha puts two hands on his shoulders, gripping him tightly. “What you need to do is rest, okay? You need to take care of yourself right now. You were exhausted, you were dehydrated, you’d been running yourself into the ground for over 24 hours. Your body --”

“I don’t care about what I need to do for myself!” Clint bursts out, the emotions he’s been holding behind a dam of pent-up frustration and confusion finally breaking through. “She was there, Nat! She was there and then she wasn’t, because she was just gone. She was just... _gone_!”

The stinging pain in Natasha’s eyes is obvious, as are the start of tears, and, _of course she doesn’t know,_ he realizes. Why would she know? It’s not like this was some kind of psychic spell where you knew who was okay and who wasn’t, even if you were thousands of miles away.

“Laura?” Natasha asks, her voice soft.

“Cooper and Lila,” Clint adds tightly, trying to keep his own tears down. He hates when he loses it like this; being angry is so much easier to accept than being upset. “Nate...he’s okay. Lucky, too. I left them with Hannah. She’s taking care of them.” He swallows and barks out a sardonic laugh. “Isn’t that funny? The goddamn dog lived and Laura ceased to exist. And I abandoned my son when I said I wouldn’t anymore.”

Even though Natasha’s breathing is slow and steady, her face is anything but the measure of calm. She gets up from where she’s been sitting beside him and starts pacing. Clint rolls his head back, trying to control his emotions.

“I want to see Wanda.”

Natasha turns around, shaking her head. “You can’t.”

“Bullshit I can’t,” Clint says, because he refuses to believe what his brain is telling him based on her abrupt response. “Nat...where the hell is Wanda?”

Natasha bites down on her bottom lip and Clint feels the blood drain from his body. His hands, which have been clutching the side of bed, fall limp while his vision swims dangerously. It takes about four seconds of quiet, dreadful calm before he snaps, his voice loudly ricocheting off the pristine walls.

“ _Where the hell is Wanda_?”

“She’s gone, Clint! She’s not here!” Natasha is yelling over him, her voice just as loud, but the moment she says the words out loud, she seems to fold in on herself. “She’s gone.”

To be honest, Clint’s not sure why this is hitting him so hard, aside from the fact that it seems so goddamn _unfair_ that Wanda had to end up being a part of this. It was bad enough that he was reeling from losing Laura, from losing his children. Having Wanda ripped away from him, especially when his last conversation with her had been an explanation of his boring adult week, feels like the final knife twist in a wound that was already on the verge of being fatal.

“I can’t believe you!” Clint snaps. “I took a deal to get out of this! I took a goddamn deal keep everyone safe, and in return, _you_ were supposed to keep _her_ safe!”

“I _was_ keeping her safe!” Natasha snaps back, her voice rising again. “I checked in on her, and I made sure she was looked after. I came to her when she needed help! I didn’t leave her alone. Clint, this is monsters and magic --”

“Don’t you dare use that line on me,” Clint threatens dangerously. “Not with this.”

“Fine!” Natasha retorts. “Then grow the fuck up and stop blaming everyone else for what happened to the people you cared about, because you know damn better than to pin this on me or you!”

For some reason, Natasha’s words make him even angrier, and he slams his hand down on the rail of the bed. Pain reverberates through his wrist and his arm, but he’s too blinded by anger to feel the impact.

“I could’ve been there, but I wasn’t!” Clint shouts. “I wasn’t there, and you didn’t do _enough_!”

“And what would you have done if you had been there?” Natasha shouts back, every inch of her vibrating with an anger that’s beyond what she would normally show, especially away from the farm. “Tell me how you would have done something different other than stand there and watch as she drifted away into dust because _nothing_ I did or didn’t do would have changed that! You don’t even know why this happened in the first place, but of course you put all of this on me!”

Natasha turns and walks away, but she doesn’t leave. Instead, she stands at the other side of the room, facing the wall, breathing hard with her arms crossed. Everything about her body is tense and tight, her shoulders shaking. Clint stops clenching his jaw, realizing that everything hurts a little too much, and his body starts shaking in the aftermath of an adrenaline crash.

“Remember when Laura had her miscarriage?”

Natasha still doesn’t turn around. “Yeah. You lost it.”

“I know.” Clint looks down at his hands, feeling lost and heavy and homesick for something he can’t even describe. Somehow, even the worst days of his life and the worst arguments of his marriage seemed better than this lingering darkness of loss. Laura and Lila and Cooper and Wanda...all of them were gone, and it feels like he’s failed everyone who has ever trusted him.

“This isn’t fair,” he says finally. “None of it is fair. Why are you here...why am I here, and why are they not here?”

Natasha shakes her head and turns around, allowing Clint to see the anger and hurt on her face. “I don’t know,” she admits. “I don’t, Clint. I -- do you even know what happened?”

It’s the first time since his tirade, since everything happened, that he realizes he doesn’t. He’d assumed Natasha had used her dumb “monsters and magic” line not only because this was something they’d never encountered before, but because she was brushing off his guilt the way she usually did when he overreacted and let his anger get the best of him in a situation that involved something happening to someone he loved.

“No.”

Natasha moves slowly towards him, sitting back down on the bed. She takes his hand and squeezes it gently; the warmth of her touch spreading through him and and taming his anger.

“There’s a...god, I guess -- an alien. I’m not sure how to describe him. Thanos.” She lets out a long breath. “He’s been after these things called Infinity Stones forever, probably years.”

“So he wanted to collect some space stones,” Clint says, leaning back in bed. “What do these stones have to do with what happened?”

“Everything,” Natasha responds. “The tesseract, Loki, Vision’s mind stone...so much of what we’ve been through over the years, all of it leads back to Thanos. Each stone controls a different power -- things like reality, time -- and he said if he got all six...” Natasha pauses, her gaze moving to the window and her eyes becoming cloudy, as if she’s in a trance. “He said if he got them, he could wipe out half the universe by snapping his fingers.”

As the words leave her mouth, realization suddenly dawns on Clint in that horrible way when you’re hit with a confirmation of something you’re trying to convince yourself isn’t true. “That’s why Laura disappeared. Because he got all six.”

Natasha nods. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “He came to Wakanda. That’s where we fought him. It wasn’t...we lost, in the end,” she finishes, one hand unconsciously floating to her chest. Clint frowns when he notices she’s pointing to where she’s probably injured.

“This...wiping out the universe thing,” Clint says, because it still feels strange to say out loud. “It was random?”

“Supposedly,” Natasha confirms. “We lost people here, too. Bucky and T’Challa and Wanda…” She smiles sadly. “It feels like there’s no one left.”

Clint lets his breathing settle. “So who?”

Natasha bites down on her lip. “Steve. Rhodey. Me. And….”

“And?”

“And Bruce.”

Clint blinks as the world starts to spin again. “Bruce? _Banner_?”

Natasha nods. “Yes,” she answers a little too sharply, one finger stabbing at the bed covers. “He’s back, I guess. Three years or so of being away, and then he just comes back and re-joins the team like he’s always been here. I guess now I know how you felt when I left the farm for long periods of time,” she adds. Her tone is light and joking, but Clint can tell she’s trying very hard to cover up something hurtful, and he also recognizes the strong undercurrent of _don’t ask me about this right now because I don't want to talk about it._ As much as he wants to poke that horse (and oh, he wants to poke it badly), he feels like they’ve done enough arguing for one day.

“What about Tony?” Clint asks, remembering their last conversation on the porch.

Natasha shrugs. “No one’s seen him since he flew up on another spaceship. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether or not he’s alive right now. Knowing Tony, though, he probably is.”

Clint nods. “Yeah,” he says slowly, his mind flashing to Pepper. “You know, when he came to visit to tell me about that deal he made, he told me he was trying to make a life for himself, too. That he wanted to stop doing stuff like this. I thought maybe for once he meant it.”

“Tony is always going to be Tony,” Natasha responds a little too nonchalantly. “It’s not his fault. Besides, you’re more alike than you think.”

Clint rolls his eyes. “We’re both sarcastic assholes?”

“You’re both empathetic,” Natasha confirms. “You both want to protect the people you love, but you also can’t stop feeling like you have a responsibility to make the world safe for other people. You know that’s the reason we even exist right now -- why I’m even here.”

Clint tries to smile. “I guess you’re right. Then again, you’re pretty much always right.” He twists his hand until their fingers are entwined and notices that Natasha’s gaze has migrated towards the floor, her head perpetually turned away so that he can’t quite her see her eyes.

“What?”

“I just…” Natasha trails off, still keeping her gaze transfixed on the floor. “You said you wished you were here. And I wish I could’ve been there. I hate that I wasn’t there. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I didn’t get to tell Laura I was thinking of her.” She pauses, her fingers brushing against his left hand and over the wedding ring he’s still wearing. “Last time I was home, I didn’t recognize the shoes that Laura had put out on the porch because Nate had gotten so big...and I hadn’t even been away that long.”

Clint closes his eyes. “I didn’t want you to go,” he says. “You know that. Neither of us wanted you to go. But…”

“But?”

He knows if he says it the way he means it, it’s probably going to hit a nerve. He opens his eyes, exhaustion flowing through his body and settling into every nerve ending and every brittle bone broken and bruised and scarred over the years.

“We both had a choice.”

“No,” Natasha says shortly, her rebuke almost immediate as her head snaps up. “You didn’t have a choice. But I did. And they were going to come for your family, Clint! For _my_ family!”

“And you think running away made them any safer?”

He hates that he’s angry, especially in the wake of everything that’s happened. He hates that he can’t let it go. He hates that he’s calling it out for what it is, even though hearing Natasha say the words _my family_ still gets him in a way that nothing else ever could.

Natasha shakes her head. “No,” she acknowledges. “But at least it gave them a chance.” She’s looking at him head on now, and he knows he can’t hide the pain in his eyes any more that she can hide the tears collecting in hers.

“I don’t know if it was worth the chance.”

“I know,” Natasha says, squeezing his hand again. “But we have to believe it was.”

She adjusts herself on her bed so she’s closer to his body rather than just sitting on the edge of the mattress, and Clint doesn’t even bother to ask if she’s worried about anyone seeing them like this together. He simply lets her press her body to his, soaking in her body heat and solid touch.

“I couldn’t keep them safe,” he says, his voice breaking. “I took a deal to protect them while you were out there on your own. I stayed home to protect my family, to be there for them, and I couldn’t even keep them safe...I failed them.” He pauses. “What kind of person am I?”

Natasha kisses the hollow of his neck softly. “The kind of person who doesn’t let down the people you love. And the kind of person who is going to figure out how to fix this.”

Clint wants to laugh, because suddenly Natasha’s words seem all too true. This _was_ monsters and magic and nothing they had ever experienced. Taking down a Norse god with a magical staff and a killer robot was nothing compared to figuring out how to fix this -- his family disappearing right under his nose, not to mention his friends and his teammates and who knew who else.

But Natasha was right, somehow, the way she always was when he flew off the handle or got too down on himself to see any kind of lighted path. He was going to fix this. He has no idea how, but he’s got Natasha, and he’s got Steve, and maybe even Tony’s out there, and alien god or not, he was going to bring Laura and Cooper and Lila back if it was the last thing he did.

He was going to go home and hug Nathaniel and when he did, his family would be whole and alive.

“I’ll make sure they come back,” he promises determinedly as Natasha kisses him again. “I swear to god, I’m going to get them back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I make no apologies for feelings.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ten million apologies for taking a little longer than usual to get this up, but I've been dealing with some IRL stuff (good stuff! Good stuff I can hopefully share soon!) that has been taking up my writing time because of its priority. On the upside, this chapter is probably the longest one yet (look, we're returning to long chapters, yay) and I've got about half of chapter 5 already written so I won't make you wait forever for the next one.)

**2016**

 

Laura’s reached what she considers her final straw.

The past week has been frazzled enough to warrant her pulling out the good liquor when the kids have gone to bed; Lila came home with a goose-egg size lump on her knee from running too fast at recess and Cooper brought home a math quiz with a C+ on it, which sent Clint on a stern dad lecture. Part of her had been glad that things were spiraling out of control, because it meant that the three of them barely had time to breathe, much less talk about the impending consequence of Tony’s house arrest deal. The other part of her wouldn’t have minded a few more hours of sleep or quiet.

Tonight is movie tonight, because she’s been too tired to fix anything for dinner other than reheated mac and cheese, and Clint’s been patching up the barn again and lost track of time, and there was only so much Natasha could help out with when it came to three kids. But despite sitting on the couch with her feet up on Clint’s legs, Natasha’s head on Clint’s shoulder, Lila sandwiched between them, Cooper stretched out on the floor with Lucky, and Nate dozing on Clint’s chest, Laura doesn’t feel relaxed or tired. She tries to concentrate on the movie she’s seen at least a dozen times -- _Cars 2_ \-- laughing along with her children and trying to find amusement in the things that even her almost teenager thinks are funny.

Clint, to his credit, doesn’t seem to notice something’s off -- and if he does, he doesn’t bother to say anything. Natasha glances at her every so often, but by now, Laura is used knowing how to appear interested at just the right times to avoid being read so easily.

She nudges Clint when the credits start to roll, Lila chattering loudly about when they’re going to get to go see Cars Land at Disneyland and giving Clint puppy dog eyes as she talks. Laura chokes down a laugh, knowing he’s all but ignoring her pleas behind the smiles he’s giving her, and looks around the living room as her children pick themselves up from the floor, straightening pillows and blankets that have fallen over from their makeshift fort.

“Bedtime,” Clint announces, getting up carefully and passing Nate to Natasha. “Last one up the stairs is a bad arrow.”

“Dad, that’s so _cheesy_ ,” Cooper says with a roll of his eyes but the words don’t stop him from racing up the stairs behind Lila, trying to elbow his way in. Laura watches them go, and Natasha puts a hand on her arm.

“You wanna go up and help? I can stay and clean up down here.”

“No,” Laura says, turning around to press a kiss to Natasha’s mouth. “You go. I’ll be up soon.”

Natasha nods and follows Cooper and Lila up the stairs, and Clint turns to Laura with a raised brow.

“You sure you’re okay? Not like you to pass up a chance to deal with two hyperactive children before bed.”

Laura smiles, because Clint’s words are rooted in the deep sarcasm she’s come to love and know over the years. “Yes,” she lies, although it doesn’t feel like a lie. She’s not technically upset, but something is off and she’s not sure what that something is. It bothers her, in the way that things bother her when she can’t settle on why...even though, deep down, she probably knows the reason.

“Well, how about one hyperactive child?”

Laura rolls her eyes as Nathaniel is all but dumped into her arms, and the baby looks up at his mother with a huge grin. Laura smiles back, kissing him on the nose.

“Barton shit eating grin,” she mutters to herself as she hoists him higher on her shoulder, looking around the house again. The worn curtains need replacing and the floor probably needs to be refurbished; Laura remembers Clint talking about that absantly over breakfast a few days ago. She smiles as she takes in the messy space, listens to the creaks and the pounding of feet against the hardwood upstairs; if she listens long enough she knows she’ll hear owls starting to howl softly to each other and maybe some of the hawks that fly over the farm. Laura closes her eyes, letting the sounds and feelings of the farm calm her the way she’s been doing for the past few nights when she’s felt out of place mentally. Everything about her home -- _their_ home -- is a scratch and dent of love, and if nothing else, Laura knows she can always count on that.

Nathaniel tugs at a piece of loose hair, and Laura looks at her son again. Realizing from the look in his eyes that the baby is nowhere near sleepy, she makes an executive decision.

“I’m going to get some work done and let him stay down here with me,” Laura says, nodding to the kitchen. “If that’s okay.”

Clint nods. “Course.” He kisses the top of her head and Laura smiles as the scracchiness of his beard rubs against her scalp.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, tipping her head up so she can meet his eyes.

Clint’s brow furrows. “For what?”

Laura shrugs. “Just...everything. I’m glad you’re here.”

Clint kisses her again. “Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” he promises as he turns to walk upstairs. Laura watches him go, and then grabs Nathaniel’s Pack n’ Play from where it’s been positioned near the edge of the living room floor. Dragging it into the kitchen with one hand, she places Nate inside and surveys the sink still piled high with dishes, before deciding she has more important things to worry about than a plate of dried spaghetti sauce.

She can still hear noises from upstairs -- Clint talking calmly but firmly as he tries to get Lila to sleep, Cooper moving across the floor of his room, likely putting things back in his dresser drawer. Satisfied that nothing is going to blow up if she stops paying attention for five minutes, she opens the cupboard and takes out a half-empty bottle of Woodford Reserve, pouring herself a small glass and taking it back to the table. Laura picks up a small notebook that’s been sitting on the edge of the countertop and opens it, grabbing a pen and starting to doodle. She pauses every once in awhile to pick up her drink but the act of blindly moving a pen over the small pieces of paper calms her, and aside from glancing over to make sure Nathaniel doesn’t need attention, she loses track of time completely.

“I didn’t know you drew.”

Laura looks up and finds Natasha standing across from her, leaning against the archway that separates the kitchen and the living room. She shakes her head.

“I don’t,” she admits. “I doodle here and there. Clint’s the one who draws. He does all the blueprints and angles and I…I just like doing it to pass the time. I’m not very good.”

Natasha sits down next to her, tilting her head so she can see the drawings better. She traces a finger over a winged raven and lets out a small sigh. “How is it that I’ve known you for over ten years and I’m still learning things about you?”

Laura shrugs. “That’s marriage, isn’t it? Always learning something new.” She meets Natasha’s eyes, finding that the lines on her face and fatigue in her eyes is more clear than usual.

“Was Clint angry with you?”

Natasha swallows and shakes her head. “Yes. But it wasn’t totally his fault. I was angry with him, so we called it even.” She pauses. “Are you angry with me?”

Laura purses her lips, knowing how to respond. “No,” she says honestly. “I’m not. I don’t know what I am. I’m not angry, but...”

“You’re sad?”

Laura swallows, because that’s closer, but not exactly the answer either. “I just wish things could be different.”

Natasha nods, picking up Laura’s pen. “That’s fair,” she says calmly, twirling it in between her fingers. She sighs, letting the pen fall from her hand and clatter to the table. “It’s not that I’m trying to find ways to leave, you know.”

“You never are,” Laura says quietly. “But we all know that this is what it is. You’re going to leave at some point. Something is going to happen. We’re not going to be able to retire and live a life the way we want to. So I think we should stop pretending that part of this life doesn’t exist and just...accept it.”

“Accept it,” Natasha repeats, taking Laura’s glass. She swallows a mouthful of whiskey with practiced ease. “Can I ask you a question?”

Laura picks up the pen and puts a finishing doodle on the trees around the raven. “Of course.”

“You still don’t regret it, right? Any of it?”

Laura stares at the table and then reaches for her glass. “I regret the fights,” she says after taking a long sip. “And the waiting. And I regret that my body doesn’t move the way it used to, and that I have stretch lines I’ll never get rid of, and my breasts will never look as good as they did post pregnancies.” She pauses to smile. “But I don’t regret this,” Laura continues, gesturing to the house and making sure to move her hand far away enough so that Natasha can tell she’s indicating Clint and her children. She looks down at her wedding ring and her eyes stray to the ring Natasha is wearing -- the one that she hadn’t bothered to take off since she’d stayed home, knowing no one would come looking for her. “And I won’t _ever_ regret us. Is that what you’re worried about?”

Natasha doesn’t answer, but Laura can read her face as if she’s wearing the expression herself. She immediately reaches for Natasha’s arm, scooting closer.

“I wish I could make you believe that this isn’t going away,” she says softly, pulling their fingers together as she lays her head on Natasha’s shoulder. “No matter how angry we get at each other.”

Natasha nods into the curve of Laura’s neck, and then dips her head down, kissing her collarbone. Laura can’t help the moan that escapes from her throat, and her knees buckle against the chair she’s leaning forward on.

“Fuck,” Laura breathes as Natasha’s lips travel down her neck. “Nat…”

“I know,” Natasha murmurs, her breath ghosting along Laura’s skin, and Laura realizes she’s not exactly referencing her incomplete statement as much as she’s affirming their previous conversation.

“Mom?”

Laura and Natasha jump away from each other as if they’ve been shocked, Laura falling back into her seat as her stomach flips upon hearing her son’s voice. Cooper looks back and forth between Natasha and Laura and for a moment, there’s nothing but heavy, tense silence.

“Um. I wanted water.”

Laura lets out a long sigh and points to the cupboard. “You didn’t have to ask, you know.”

Cooper grins, a perfect imitation of Clint knowing he’s walked into something he’s not supposed to but not regretting it. “I know, mom.” He walks to the cupboard and takes a glass, filling it from the sink. As he leaves the kitchen, Natasha gets up quickly and Laura follows suit.

“Coop --”

“Nah, that’s okay, Nat.” Cooper turns around at the bottom of the stairs. “You want to talk to me about what I saw, right?”

Natasha hesitates. “I just wanted to make sure --”

“It’s fine. I’ve seen you kiss before,” Cooper interrupts. “Lila has, too.”

“Which time?” Laura mutters under her breath as Cooper continues walking upstairs.

“Night, mom. Night, Nat.”

Laura watches him go, passing Clint on the way down. He’s showered quickly, Laura realizes, because his hair is spiking in every which direction and his shirt is damp around the collar. He raises an eyebrow as he meets Laura’s eyes, before his gaze shifts to Natasha.

“What’d I miss?”

Laura sinks down on the couch while Natasha walks back to the kitchen to grab the glass of whiskey and check on Nathaniel. “Cooper saw us kissing.”

“Oh, is that all?” Clint asks cheekily, flopping down next to her and spraying her with warm droplets of water from his still-soaked hair.

Laura rubs her eyes. “Contrary to popular belief, I’d prefer _not_ to have all our unconventional public displays of affection scarring our kids,” she points out as Natasha, now holding the baby and the whiskey glass, walks back into the living room.

“Look on the bright side,” she offers as she holds out the glass, letting Laura take the alcohol from her hands. “In the grand scheme of horrible things to happen to this family, Cooper seeing us kiss is not a national emergency anymore.”

“That’s true,” Clint remarks. “I mean, he understands our relationship. Kind of. And we’ve had enough arguments over the years that I think he’s in a good place about it right now.”

Laura groans. “I can’t believe how calm you’re both being about this.”

“Ah, come on, Laur. We’re old retired people now. Well, I’m retired. You’re still grading papers, and Natasha is still the world’s greatest Avenger.” He smiles at her, and Laura knows he’s trying to diffuse any mood that might’ve been caused by all of their feelings over the past few days. Laura looks around the living room, settling back into the well-worn couch. “Plus, he’s almost a teenager. He’s still got his anger issues, but he’s past all that thinking that we don’t love each other because you kiss other people besides me. Well, I hope he is.”

Laura shakes her head, taking a sip of whiskey. “We’ve had so many conversations here.”

“Usually with alcohol,” Natasha adds. Laura laughs quietly.

“And in the middle of the night.”

“Well, how _else_ are we supposed to have conversations when we have kids to look after and worry about?”

There’s a long pause, and in the silence, Nathaniel lets out a few babbling incoherent words from Natasha’s lap.

“I forget, sometimes,” Natasha says when she finally speaks again. “How it all started. How long it’s been. How many years...how much we’ve been through.”

“Me too,” Laura admits. “Sometimes I feel like it was last week that Clint was coming home and telling me about his new job...sometimes I feel like it was a lifetime ago.”

“It _was_ a lifetime ago,” Clint interjects, leaning into Laura and putting a hand on her leg. “Like I said, we’re old and retired now. In a few years, we can probably apply for AARP. Hey, do you think they give discounts to Avengers? Maybe we can finally afford to take Lila to Disneyland.”

Laura starts laughing, because she can’t help it, because her life has become so normal and so unconventional all at the same time and while it’s a life no one else would understand, it’s a life she knows she’d never trade. Natasha starts laughing, and even Nathaniel, buoyed by the emotions of the adults, starts laughing, high-pitched baby giggles that make Laura’s heart swell with love and contentment.

 

***

 

Clint likes calling Wanda.

He tries not to do it often, because he wants her to have her space, and, okay, he definitely took offense that one time Laura joked that he was an overprotective dad to a surrogate daughter. Truthfully, Clint likes being able to talk to Wanda because it makes him feel happy; it’s the same kind of feeling used to have when Natasha was becoming integrated into his life and the farm and he knew he had been a part of helping her acclimate.

“So what’s on the agenda for you and Vision tonight?”

“Viz,” Wanda says, rolling her eyes on the other end of the Skype call. “Call him Viz, Clint. It’s less formal.”

Clint makes a face. “Yeah, but it _feels_ weird,” he whines. “But okay, fine. What’s on the agenda for you and _Viz_ tonight?”

Wanda twirls a lock of dark hair around her finger. “Maybe a movie. Or maybe dinner. I’m teaching him how to cook.”

“Well, good luck with that,” Clint mutters, glancing up at the sun as a rogue cloud moves over his head. “Laura’s been trying to teach me to cook for years and it still hasn’t rubbed off, because the only thing I can make without burning the kitchen down is mac and cheese. And sometimes a salad. Oh, and pizza.”

“Come to Scotland and I will cook for you,” Wanda offers. “We’ll make a date night out of it.”

“Date night, huh?” Clint grins. “Yeah, maybe Laura could be talked into an overseas vacation. We haven’t really done the whole ‘leave the kids and go away’ thing since our honeymoon.”

“Well, it’s not like you didn’t have a reason,” Wanda observes, her voice dropping. Her words hit him suddenly, because as she says them, he realizes that with this new house arrest deal, nothing is an option. Even leaving the farm to go see Wanda via quinjet isn’t really an option. He hadn’t bothered to travel in the past few months of being retired aside from a short weekend trip to the lake house, but he knows that he can’t risk the government trying to track him if someone saw him and recognized him.

“Clint?” Wanda frowns in the silence that follows her teasing, and he knows he hasn’t been able to hide the thoughts on his face. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Clint says as he slouches back in the large porch swing and adjusts the tablet on his legs, sticking his feet up on on the railing. “Just got an update on my house arrest situation. Apparently it’s a little more binding than I thought.”

“Oh.” Wanda looks sad. “So this means you can’t come visit me after all?”

Clint shakes his head. “Probably not right now,” he admits. “Not without worrying about Laura and the kids. It’s -- I’m sorry.”

Wanda pushes hair behind her ears. “It’s okay. I just thought --”

“What?” Clint leans forward instantly, letting his legs slide off the porch rail and onto the deck with a loud thump. “Wanda, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Wanda assures him quickly. “Nothing, Clint, I promise. We are safe, as far as I know. It’s just...it’s Pietro.”

“What about Pietro?” Clint asks, now curious as opposed to worried.

Wanda picks up something that looks like half a cookie and chews it thoughtfully before swallowing. “It’s just about one year after his death,” she says quietly. “In Jewish tradition, we are supposed to have an unveiling. I bought a small gravestone and I wanted to bring it to him. But I don’t want to go alone.”

Clint nods as the understanding of what Wanda is asking dawns on him, and his heart aches. “Vision?”

“He is working on altering his appearance so we can be out in public together,” Wanda says. “Even with the mindstone, we think having a human mask will be helpful. But he has not perfected anything yet, and we don’t want to risk it. I thought that you…” She trails off and straightens her shoulders. “It’s okay. It’s not so important. I can always wait and bring it to him later.”

Clint nods, trying not to focus on the disappointment he can see in Wanda’s eyes. “Anything else going on?” he asks, trying to steer the conversation into a different subject so he won’t end up dwelling. “New friends, updates on Vision’s -- sorry, _Viz’s_ \-- snappy outfits?”

Wanda smiles, shaking her head. “No. But I wish I could come back to the farm. I miss you and Laura.”

“Eventually,” Clint promises, because even _he_ has to believe this goddamn house arrest won’t last forever. Surely Ross would have get bored after awhile, even if he never let the Accords bullshit go. “I promise we’ll have you out here to visit soon, once you’re a little more settled. Okay?”

Wanda nods. “Okay. Will you tell Laura hi for me?”

“Course,” Clint answers. “Will you show me how you’re progressing with the guitar?”

Wanda grins and gets up, disappearing from the chair she’s sitting in. When she comes back, holding the guitar that Clint and Laura had given her after her last visit to the farm, she situates it on her lap. “It’s not that good yet,” she warns. “But I am practicing every day.”

Clint leans back, feeling both proud and wistful as Wanda starts playing a slow rendition of Otis Redding’s “Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay.” Some of the chords are off and her fingers slip -- he can tell from his own years of playing -- but otherwise, the song is soothing, quiet, and flows easily across the Skype connection.

“You’re a natural,” Clint declares when she’s finished, and Wanda dips her head to hide what Clint assumes is the blush coloring her cheeks.

“Thanks, _dad_. Can I go make my boyfriend dinner now?”

Clint laughs, folding his arms across his chest. “Yeah, I guess. Say hi to Viz. We’ll talk soon.”

“We will,” Wanda replies, before ending the call. Clint puts the tablet down and gets up, walking to the porch rail and leaning over the edge. The air smells of pinewood, it wafts delictactly through the air and settles on his skin, soaking into his flesh the same way it dissipates into the air. Lila’s brought blueberries and strawberries home from her latest field trip to the farmer’s market and Laura’s put them to use in a pie, the scents of which are slowly starting to make their way through the house and out the open living room window, mingling with the deep chill of impending evening. Fireflies buzz and glow in front of his face in small snaps of light and in the distance, a faint plume of smoke rises into the air from from another house’s warm embrace of what promises to be a cozy night.

“You’re not her dad.”

Clint turns to find Laura standing behind him in the now open doorway, holding a cup of coffee.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he grumbles as Laura walks closer.

“I am,” Laura says matter-of-factly, handing him a chipped and faded mug that says WORLD’S GREATEST DAD. “She may still have a lot to learn about the world, but she’s getting more comfortable. Her accent is fading. She’s acclimating to a real normal life, and Vision is helping. I think she’s less of the scared girl you brought home last year than you realize.”

“Credit Bobbi for that,” Clint says with a sigh, taking a sip of coffee. “I think being around people who _weren’t_ the Avengers but still lived with their personal shit helped her realize she wasn’t the only person dealing with this stuff. And hell, Bobbi’s as normal as they come. Mostly.”

“You know how I’m a good wife?” Laura asks, sitting down on the swing. Clint follows her lead and sits down next to her.

“Because you let me bring home some Russian girl who liked to throw knives?”

Laura rolls her eyes. “That, and I never even blinked when your method of help for Wanda was a former girlfriend who you had never mentioned before a year ago. Nor did I actually take her up on her offer to trade stories about living with and sleeping with Clint Barton.”

“You do that already with Natasha,” Clint grumbles, but he’s smiling as he takes another large gulp of caffeine, letting the hot liquid slide down his throat. He turns the mug around in his hands, letting his fingers slide over the letters printed on the porcelain.

“Hey, how do you feel about a visit to upstate New York?”

Laura looks at him in confusion. “You’re planning our next vacation? I thought you were still under house arrest.”

“Not like that,” he says as Laura leans her head on his shoulder. “Wanda wanted me to go with her to visit Pietro’s grave, and doesn’t want to go alone. Vision can’t exactly go with her, and normally, I’d jump on it, but I can’t risk getting us in trouble and I can’t risk getting her in trouble because I’d make a stupid mistake, so --”

“So you want me to go instead.”

Clint shrugs. “I just thought maybe it would be worth asking,” he says slowly, watching tendrils of grey steam rise from the cup. “You know how she feels about you. About the farm.”

Laura lifts her head from his shoulder. “I really can’t,” she says softly. “Not with everything the way it is right now. We’re finally stable, and I’m sort of afraid to even go away for a few days because it might set something off with Lila. I think we just...we really need to focus on being as normal as possible, for their sake.”

Clint nods, biting down on his lip. In the distance, a dog barks and another dog howls back, yards away. Clint waits for the inevitable third howl that will be his own dog joining in, then remembers that Natasha’s taken him on a pre-dinner walk with Lila and Cooper.

“Do you think Natasha could go?”

Her voice is so quiet, it almost gets lost in the wind. Clint turns to look at her, realizing the exact same hesitancy must be reflected in his own eyes.

“She could,” Clint agrees haltingly. “It might be a nice thing for her -- after what she told us a few years ago about visiting her own parents. And she hasn’t seen Wanda for awhile.”

Laura wraps her hands more tightly around Clint’s arm as the wind picks up. “It’s worth asking. We both know that this is going to come up eventually -- her having to go somewhere because she can. And I’d rather it be Wanda than something more dangerous...wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Clint admits, knowing that he can’t refute Laura’s words. From his vantage point on the porch, he thinks he can see the top of Natasha’s auburn head and Lila’s small body, a hand swinging along with her own. “I guess I would.”

 

**2018**

 

Natasha doesn’t put quite so much emphasis on Clint staying in bed given everything that’s going on. He’d definitely been worse for the wear when he’d showed up in Wakanda, but not bad enough to warrant more than a few days worth of bed rest. So when she gets to his designated room and finds it empty, she’s more confused than annoyed. What was left of Wakanda was a big place, and the last time Clint had been here, he hadn’t exactly seen more than a few balconies and rooms. The fact that his family had just disappeared in front of his eyes didn’t make her feel better about him wandering around alone; Natasha wasn’t exactly worried that he was going to go off the rails but she _was_ worried he’d start to think about some rash solution to this problem. And while all Natasha wants to do is bring Laura and Lila and Cooper home from whatever hell they’re currently living in (because she can’t think of them as dead, she _can’t_ , no matter what people say), she knows it won’t be as easy as interrogating someone or flying off to another country.

“If, uh. If you’re looking for Clint, I saw him taking a walk a few hours ago.”

Natasha turns around, trying not to let her body freeze up. She’d been so good at pushing down her anger and every other emotion after seeing Bruce for the first time in over two years, largely because of everything else they were dealing with. There hadn’t been time to think about how she felt, there hadn’t even been time to call Laura or Clint and complain about her feelings. But now that the dust had settled, literally, and now there was nothing to do except strategize, comprehend, grieve, and wait, Natasha realizes she really has no idea how she’s supposed to react to Bruce just _being_ here.

“Thanks,” she manages, meeting his eyes. Out of the Hulkbuster uniform he looks even smaller and meeker than she remembers, his feet nervously shuffling against the floor and his clothes hanging off his body as if they’re too big for him. There was a time when she _wanted_ this, she reminds herself. There was a time she almost gave up the family she already had because of this. She _had_ to address it, even if she didn’t want to.

“Natasha --”

“Are we really going to do this now?”

Bruce looks startled, as if he hasn’t expected her to snap so harshly. Natasha supposes he hasn’t, given that all her reactions to him so far have been neutral and calm and professional.

“I know you have a lot of questions.”

Natasha takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, counting to five in her head. “I _had_ questions,” she says firmly. “But they were all answered when you fucked off into the sunset after Sokovia.”

Bruce rubs the back of his neck, casting his gaze towards the ground. “Nat --”

“No, you know what? We are. We are going to do this now,” Natasha decides, even though she knows Clint could walk back in at any moment and catch this conversation. “You’re going to tell me why you thought it was _okay_ to make me feel like I had someone I could finally relate to and then just disappear when you got scared. I was scared, too! Of a lot of things! And you know what I did? My job! I worked through my issues and stayed on Earth. I didn’t run away in a spaceship!”

Bruce shakes his head. “I messed up,” he says quietly. “I know I did. I swear, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“But you did, Bruce! And it cost me! It cost me --” She stops, because she knows she’s getting ahead of herself. She’s not going to tell him it was because of how he made her feel that she missed Nathaniel’s birth. She’s not going to tell him that it’s one of her biggest regrets. She’s not going to tell him that thinking about him kept her from loving Laura and Clint, because she didn’t feel like she could fit in with their perfect life but maybe she could fit in with another outcast who was too dangerous for the world.

“Natasha, _you_ were the one who pursued me,” Bruce offers in the silence after Natasha cuts herself off. “ _You_ wanted this. I tried to tell you that it wouldn’t work.”

“That’s not an excuse!” Natasha snaps angrily. Bruce narrows his eyes and Natasha swears she sees a hint of green coloring his neck, but it disappears as Bruce’s body relaxes from it’s tense posture.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe we shouldn’t do this now. I’m sorry, Natasha.”

He turns and walks out of the room. Although Natasha wants to run after him and continue yelling, she knows she’s not in the right mind to say anything she won’t regret so she lets him go. Clenching her hands by her side, she feels frustrated tears spring to her eyes and tries to tell herself that it’s probably the aftermath of all the feelings she’s been keeping in since Thanos snapped his fingers, but even she can’t kid herself. This is part of it, too.

Natasha closes the door and the sinks down against the wall. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. She was supposed to yell, he was supposed to -- they were supposed to _what_? There was no roadmap for how this was supposed to go. There was nothing to prepare her for Bruce dropping back into her life as if nothing had happened. Natasha thinks that if this had happened even six months ago, she would have been able to handle it better. But not after she’d finally put him out of her mind enough to accept the mistakes she’d made. Still, she needed to say her peace and she wanted him to say his. She wanted him to apologize for running off and hurting her, because dammit, he owed her that much.

Natasha reaches for the cell phone she’s been carrying around in the clothes that Shuri has lent her, and she’s halfway into dialing the farm before she stops, her heart dropping somewhere near her feet. It’s not just that she knows she can’t call because no one’s there -- there’s quite _literally_ no one there. Laura doesn’t exist anymore. Lila doesn’t exist anymore. Cooper --

Natasha throws the phone across the floor, watching it careen into the opposite wall.

“Huh. Thought I was the one with anger problems.”

Natasha looks up as Clint opens the door and hands her a large cup decorated with some Wakandan designs. Upon looking down, Natasha realizes it’s filled with red wine.

“Where did you --”

“Funny story,” Clint says, sitting down next to her. “Turns out if you wander around on your own and look like you almost died, the people here will offer you alcohol. Or maybe they just don’t care because half the world is dead, anyway.”

Natasha takes a sip of wine, trying to figure out if she wants to say something about the confrontation with Bruce, despite the fact that she knows their conversation is far from over. “I went to call Laura, just now,” she says instead. “And I realized I couldn’t. Because she’s not there.” She tries to smile, but she can’t make herself show an emotion that doesn’t feel forced. “I forgot she’s not there.”

Clint takes her hand. “I did, too,” he says. “I was walking around -- I was thinking of Lila, and how I should call and read her a bedtime story, and then…” He trails off, shaking his head. “Didn’t remember that I can’t do that, because she’s gone.” He pauses. “Do you think when they come back, they’ll remember?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha says honestly, wishing she had a better answer because the words hurt her as much as she knows they hurt Clint. He looks down at the ground.

“What if…”

“What?”

Clint raises his eyes and Natasha is shocked at how tired they are, even with the bedrest and extra nutrition having done their job of filling out his features with a renewed healthy glow.

“What if they come back and they hate me?”

Natasha’s throat burns and she squeezes his hand. “Clint, why would they hate you?”

“Because I stood there while they disappeared,” Clint says hollowly, fixing his gaze on the window in front of him. “I just stood there and watched. I didn’t do anything to stop it. It wasn’t just that I didn’t protect them. I did nothing to help them. And Wanda --” He cuts himself off, his jaw tensing, and Natasha reaches over and puts her free hand against his cheek. As she turns his face towards her, she focuses on the hard lines around his mouth, the ones that she realizes are achingly similar to what she remembers seeing in the med bay after Loki. She wonders if he’s noticing that the clench in her own jaw is similar to the one she knew she showed him after Hydra was exposed.

“Don’t do this to yourself, Clint. Especially not with Wanda. That was completely out of your control, she wasn’t even in the same country as you.”

“You gonna tell me I’m wrong?”

Natasha swallows, because she realizes she doesn’t know what to say. For once, he’s the one who’s got all the answers -- _you weren’t there, you don’t know what it felt like, you didn’t see how they looked at me_ \-- she reads it all on his face, and the words she wants to say disappear long before she can try to form them into actual sounds. She shifts until she’s leaning against him, her head resting on his shoulder. Her cheek slides down the side of his face and short cuticles of hair rake against her skin; his beard is growing back faster than she’s expected, a result of days on the road and no grooming care.

“I know I wasn’t there,” she says finally. “I know I didn’t see what happened. But I do know what it feels like to blame yourself for the people you love getting hurt.” She lets out a long breath before continuing, and makes an executive decision in her head. “Bruce tried to talk to me.”

Clint’s muscles harden against Natasha’s cheekbone, but his body stays otherwise still. “And?”

“And...and that’s it,” Natasha says resignedly. “We didn’t exactly get very far. I got angry...I didn’t know what to say to him. I couldn’t exactly say that he messed me up so much I couldn’t even get here for Nathaniel’s birth.”

Clint snorts. “No, you couldn’t.” He pulls away from her intimate grasp. “Why’d you even try, Nat?”

Pain sears Natasha’s insides, because even though she knows Clint is asking about the conversation she’s just had, it feels like he’s also asking about three years ago. “I told you,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady. “I didn’t think I could be family, even after everything we went through. I couldn’t be a family the way you and Laura were a family.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Clint says quietly.

Natasha rubs her eyes, blinking fast as she pulls her hand away. “Because I blamed myself for hurting you and Laura,” she says finally. “Because I blamed myself for hurting him. Because I thought that the reason he left was because of me...because I’m _me_ ,” she repeats softly. “And because I had no time to think about anything when he showed up out of nowhere and just expected us to accept him as part of the team again.”

Clint reaches up and runs a hand through Natasha’s hair. Natasha thinks he’s going to make some argumentative response, but instead, he gives her a small smile.

“You know, I thought I’d get used to the blonde by now. But it’s still throwing me off.”

“Maybe it’s a good time to go back to the red,” Natasha replies, smiling back. “Not like we’re on the run anymore with half the world gone, right?”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “I mean, who knows. Maybe we got lucky and Ross was one of the people who disappeared in the snap.”

Natasha manages to laugh as she looks around the room. Most of her time on the road with Steve and Sam had been spent in small hotels or dingy safehouses; she got used to living on the run and having personal comforts every so often. It was an easy slide back into what she was used to as an Avenger, but at times, it had felt a little lonely, and Natasha had tried to keep herself busy with missions so she didn’t think about how she felt too much. Besides, coming back to the farm once every few weeks had been helpful, a small breather in the middle of the chaos.

Wakanda was nice, almost as nice as the Avengers Compound. It was certainly better than where they could have ended up, all things considered. But Wakanda wasn’t tattered curtains and lived in walls and dented cushions; Wakanda wasn’t the smell of coffee at 4am in the kitchen or the taste of whiskey on someone’s breath; Wakanda wasn’t midwestern winds and a barking dog and a broken air conditioner in the bedroom that had been waiting to be fixed for over two months.

Wakanda was nice, and the road had been refreshing in a way, but neither place was home.

“I miss Laura.”

“I know,” Clint says, and the world suddenly seems more quiet than usual. “Me too.”


	5. Chapter 5

**2016**

 

“I’m going to talk to Natasha about it today,” Clint declares at five in the morning in the bathroom while shaving. Laura gives him a sidelong glance as she rubs face wash on her cheeks, massaging the sleep out of her skin.

“It?”

“You know,” Clint says, dragging the razor down his face, trying to ignore the buzzing in his ear from his hearing aids. “Natasha going with Wanda to visit Pietro.”

“Oh.” Laura continues to rub her cheeks harshly . “Okay. You think she’ll want to go?”

Clint shrugs. “Only one way to find out.” He runs his razor under the faucet and shakes it out. “I mean, if you’re okay with it.”

“We talked about it,” Laura says, sounding tired. Clint steps away, still harboring half a face full of shaving cream, so Laura can wash her face. When she turns around to grab a hand towel, he manages to catch her eyes for the first time since waking up

“It’s not Natasha,” Clint says, realization dawning on him as Laura moves behind him, allowing him the space to finish shaving. “It’s me.”

Laura sighs and puts the towel down. “It’s you,” she admits. “And I’m sorry. I’ve been really good lately. But sometimes, it’s just --”

“I know,” Clint says, trying to finish his morning routine and not kill himself in the process. “It’s okay, Laur.” He makes a few more quick strokes along his lower jaw and then rinses off, turning around so he can pull her in for a hug. She sighs quietly in his arms, nestling her warm face into his bicep.

“It’s silly,” Laura murmurs against his skin. “It’s so silly. You’ve been home for so long and we don’t have to worry anymore. I never worried this much while you were working.”

Clint smiles at the wall as she tucks her head against him. “Yeah, you did.”

“Fine,” Laura agrees, her voice still muffled. “So why do I feel like this now, when you’ve been home forever?”

“It’s you and me,” Clint says, trying to make light of the situation, though Laura doesn’t groan or laugh like he knows she normally would. He kisses her gently, working his hands down her hair and stroking the back of her neck, a mirror of what she does for him every time that he needs to be comforted.

“Look, sometimes we just need each other more than usual, okay? There’s no harm in that.”

Laura nods in his arms and Clint kisses her again. “Why don’t I do the drop offs today?” he offers. “Least I can do if you’re feeling crappy. You can go back to bed, sleep a little more...I’ll take care of the kids.” He cocks his head towards the closed bathroom door. “I think I heard Nat get up, so you’ll have the whole room to yourself, which I know is what you want right now, yeah? Just some alone time knowing we’re all here taking care of things?”

Laura finally does pull away, smiling tentatively. “You missed a spot,” she says, reaching up to run her fingers over stubborn scruff. Clint pushes her playfully, waiting until she’s walked out of the bathroom before he starts brushing his teeth. He debates whether or not he wants to take a shower and after checking the time, he figures he can at least rinse off and walk the dog and still be back before he has to start being a responsible human.

By the time he’s slipped outside to bring Lucky on his walk around the farm, Laura has gotten back under the covers, Natasha has started a large pot of coffee, and Lila is bouncing around the kitchen with all the energy of someone who never seems to need sleep to function. Cooper, on the other hand, is dragging himself down the stairs with a patented scowl, but Clint notices he immediately brightens when Lucky runs up and starts trying to jump on him.

“Cereal, kiddo?” 

Cooper nods and continues walking into the kitchen with Lucky on his heels. Clint watches, taking a moment to marvel at his son’s height and competancy as he reaches up to grab a bowl from the cupboard before sitting down at the table. He surveys the scene before him -- Lucky pacing the floor, Cooper eating sullenly, Lila munching on pieces of toast. The top of Natasha’s red hair is barely visible from the sunroom, where he suspects she’s retreated to either read or work.

“I’m taking you to school today,” Clint announces as he walks past his children and grabs an earthy green mug, filling it with hot coffee.

Cooper looks up and cocks his head. “Why?”

“Because dad wants to take you to school,” Clint answers easily. “I didn’t realize that needed a third degree Avenger interrogation.”

Cooper smiles as Lila jumps up and Clint holds one hand up, raising an eyebrow in her direction. “Finish your breakfast, Lila baby.”

Lila makes a face but slouches back into her chair, continues to shove toast in her mouth while Clint backs out of the kitchen, heading upstairs. Peeking his head into the master bedroom, he finds Laura sitting up in bed with her journal on her lap and Nate sitting on the covers next to her legs, pawing through a baby book. Laura looks up as Clint hands her the still-steaming mug.

“Cooper and Lila are eating. Dog’s been walked. Natasha’s avoiding everything as usual. No fires to report or arguments to deal with, so I’d say on a scale of one to ten this morning, we’re looking at an eleven.”

Laura takes a sip of coffee. “Better than yesterday. You regretting this yet?”

“Not in the least,” Clint promises, leaning over to pick up his son. He cradles him easily in one arm while Nate pulls at the collar of his t-shirt. “I am a man of my word.” He leans over to kiss Laura before walking out of the room and back down the stairs, pausing at the bottom to put the baby gate in its place. When he enters the kitchen, Nate immediately squeals at the sight of his siblings. 

“Daddy I wanna feed Tasha-Nate!”

Clint glances up at the decorated floral clock above the sink and nods as he secures Nathaniel in his high chair. “You can feed him a little before school,” he says as he scoops up a handful of Cheerios and scatters them along the plastic tray, along with some bite-sized pieces of leftover toast. While Lila attempts to entice her youngest brother with food, Clint allows himself to finally indulge his own cup of coffee, which he realizes is sorely needed. Standing at the counter while watching his family he finds himself smiling; part of him wonders how it’s only been three hours since he’s woken up because it feels like he’s been awake for half the day already while the other part of him swells with pride and happiness. For all that he had been home over the years in between missions or in lulls after assignments, he’s realizing there’s a clear difference between being home and being _home_. Being home meant waking up with quick morning sex and coffee while the kids were eating and last-minute home improvements and relaxation. Being _home_ meant messy breakfasts, annoyed yelling, some crying, and grumpy morning faces that might not exist every single day – but that’s okay, because he’s here to see them on the days they do exist.

Cooper finishes his breakfast and gets up from the table, grabbing his bookbag from the living room. Clint bites down on the admonishment to make him clean his bowl and lets him go, knowing he’ll be content to sit around and read before he gets dragged into the car. Instead, he focuses on making sure Lila’s face is clean and that her clothes aren’t entirely wrinkled when she’s finally finished feeding her brother.

“Heading out,” he says as he sticks his head into the sun room. “Laura’s upstairs. Nate’s good. He just ate, can you watch him until I get back?”

Natasha nods, not looking up from her book, and Clint shakes his head as he leaves the room.

“No truck today?” Cooper asks forlornly as Clint picks up the keys to the minivan. For the second time in under an hour Clint sighs, trading the heavy keychain for a two silver keys attached to a long string of yarn.

“Only because I love you,” Clint says as Cooper’s face lights up. “Don’t tell mom, okay?”

The ride to school is filled with no less than three arguments: one over who gets to choose the radio channel (Cooper wins), one over who gets to pick dessert later (Lila wins), and one over who gets dropped off first (Cooper wins again but only because his school starts earlier, Clint points out to his daughter, so this is really an unfair fight to start anyway.) By the time Clint’s pulling back into the long dirt driveway, the positive thoughts about being home with his children have worn off and he’s mostly ready to go back to bed.

When he opens the front door, he finds Natasha sitting on the couch. A video baby monitor sitting next to her shows a grainy image of Nathaniel definitely not sleeping like he’s supposed to, but he’s not crying or making a fuss, so Clint lets Natasha’s leniency in motherhood off the hook.

“Hey, you busy?”

Natasha looks up, legs askew on the couch. “Are _you_ busy?”

“ _Excuse_ me?” Clint drops his light jacket on the floor. “I just dropped off two kids at school and had to referee three different stupid arguments, do you think I want to do anything else right now?” 

“I’m sure that reaction is exactly what Laura had in mind when you offered to do the morning drop-off,” Natasha deadpans, scooting over so Clint can flop down next to her. “But if you’re nice, I’ll get you more coffee.”

Clint rolls his head to the side. “Have I mentioned how much I love that you live here?”

“Yes, because this is so different from when I would offer you coffee while we were working,” Natasha says, getting up. “Also, have I mentioned how needy you are now that you’re retired?”

Clint rolls his eyes at her back as she gets up, and plays with his fingers while Natasha pours more coffee. There’s a blister on his left thumb from gardening, and he pokes it experimentally, trying to take some of the pain away.

“So, uh. I spoke to Wanda a few days ago,” he opens as Natasha sits down again and hands him a mug with Lila’s faded smile on it.

Natasha nods. “How is she?”

“Good. Fine.” Clint pauses. “She wants to go visit Pietro.”

Natasha stares into her coffee, squinting at the way the liquid is rippling softly as the fan above them rotates in gentle circles. “His grave?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, turning to look at her. “And she wants me to go with her. But I don’t think I can. You know, for obvious reasons. Laura doesn’t think she can go, either...she wants to stay here with the kids.”

“That didn’t stop her before,” Natasha points out knowingly.

Clint gives her a look. “I didn’t know she was going behind my back then.”

“And you didn’t need to,” Natasha answers. Clint finds himself impressed that she's managed to shut down the impending argument before it can even start. “So, what? You’re telling me because you want me to go?”

Clint shakes his head. “I’m not forcing you to go,” he says. “But I think it might be good, you know? For you and for her. Besides, you have experience with this sort of thing.”

Natasha snorts. “Yeah. Experience. Visiting dead parents isn’t really something I want to put on my resume.”

“At least you know where your parents _are_ ,” Clint points out.

“Doesn’t make me feel better, Barton.”

They both lapse into silence, and a high-pitched beeping signals the coffee maker turning off automatically. 

“You know how I feel about this house arrest stuff. And what it means for me.”

“I know,” Clint says quietly. “So if you really don’t want to go, it’s fine. I didn’t tell Wanda anything one way or another.”

Natasha takes another sip of coffee, and Clint wonders what she’s thinking. It’s true he's asking partially out of necessity -- partly because he has no other choice -- but he hadn’t been lying. He’d been serious about this trip actually being meaningful to both Natasha and Wanda; far from being the only Avengers in the dead family club, they were the only ones who had an upbringing similar enough to understand each other’s feelings.

“You sure you can keep yourself busy while I’m gone?”

“Oh, yeah.” Clint gestures around the house. “Nathaniel is gonna tear the house apart at the rate he’s going. Plus Cooper will annoy me enough, and I’m sure I can find more home improvement projects.”

Clint knows he’s consciously avoiding answering the real question she’s asking, which is if he can be okay with her leaving for an extended period of time -- should it come to that. He nods anyway, and Natasha sighs.

“Then I guess you should tell Wanda she’s going to have some company.”

 

***

 

Natasha hasn’t talked to Tony since he had called to let her know he was going to be checking on Vision and Wanda now that they were on their own. Knowing what Clint had told her about his recent visit didn’t make her keen about the idea of contacting him now, but she also wasn’t about to spend insane amounts of money on a long international flight to Scotland, only to turn around and come back to the United States. So she bites her tongue and dials the number that she’s kept in her phone under “ATS – EMERG.” 

“Hi,” she says when he picks up, not bothering to let him say hi back before she continues. “I need to borrow a jet.”

Tony’s silent on the other end of the line for a long time. When he responds, Natasha can tell he’s trying to cover up the surprise in his voice with casual sarcasm, a tone she knows all too well from being around him for so many years. “Hi to you too, Romanoff.” 

Despite wanting to stay angry at him, despite wanting to keep her distance until things had blown over a little more than they already have, she allows herself to smile. “Thanks for picking up.”

“What, you think I’d miss a chance to take your call?”

“I’m never sure,” Natasha deadpans. “But I appreciate it.”

“You called because you need something, isn’t that why anyone calls now?”

This time, his tone doesn’t hide his sarcasm, but Natasha also notices that he sounds a little sad. She reminds herself that it wasn’t just her and Clint who needed to heal after the shitshow that was Berlin and the Raft; for all she knew, Steve still wasn’t talking to Tony but she wasn’t about to bark up that tree. She wasn’t calling to gloat or find out information. She was calling because she needed a favor, and he was the only one who had access to what she needed.

“I’ll only have it for a few days,” Natasha says instead of feeding into his banter. “I can get it back to you in 48 hours, tops.”

“Well, the jet I have isn’t doing much good sitting here,” Tony answers. “But I’m kinda short anyone to fly it, sans myself. So if you want it, you need to come get it.”

“That’s a hard bargain,” Natasha bites back, unable to help herself. “I suppose I can make the trip.”

She hangs up on Tony’s snort of laughter and drops the phone on the bed covers. Looking around the room, she starts picking up a few shirts and pants to shove into the small overnight bag she’s borrowing for the trip.

“I think that went well.”

Natasha turns to see Clint standing behind her, gesturing to his ears. “With these things turned up to infinity, I can hear both sides of a phone call.”

“God bless technology,” Natasha mutters. “Not like you didn’t hear anything you shouldn’t have.”

Clint shrugs. “Tony’s being Tony. And you need a jet, and he’s got one for you. I don’t really care about the specifics.” He nods towards the door. “Laura said she’d drive you to the airport. I’d go, but –“

“But, you’re retired,” Natasha finishes. Clint smiles.

“Yeah, that and Cooper actually asked me to practice sign language with him before we worked on his bow. I’m taking my wins where I can get them now.”

Well, it’s not like I’ll be gone for days,” Natasha says as she shoves another pair of sweatpants into her bag. “So I think you can let go of the guilt that comes with not officially seeing me off.” She straightens up, pulling her ring off her finger. She’s surprised at how easily it comes off despite the fact she’s been wearing it more regularly and realizes she’s never actually worn it long enough before now to feel familiar with how rings adapted to their owners’ flesh. Even when she became comfortable with having a ring to begin with, she had worn it around her neck on a chain, or carried it around in her pocket.

“Keep it until I get back?” she asks, handing it to Clint. “You know the drill.”

“I know, I know,” Clint says, fingering the ring as he takes it. “No one gets to know about us. Not even my not-surrogate daughter.” 

Natasha rolls her eyes. “No, not even her.”

It feels strange to kiss Clint, take her stuff, leave with only a quick goodbye to Nathaniel and with no goodbye to Cooper and Lila, who are at school. When she gets into the car, she realizes she can’t stop herself from looking back at the farm as she leaves and feels a little silly when Laura apparently notices. 

“You okay?” Laura asks, navigating the van onto a wider, longer road.

“Yeah,” Natasha says, trying to keep her focus on the long stretch of cement. “Just feels a little strange to leave like this.”

“Like what?” Laura asks, reaching towards the cup holder for her large iced tea.

“Like…I don’t know,” Natasha answers, suddenly feeling frustrated that she can’t figure out her emotions. “Like this. Like not going off on some long mission or worrying about saying goodbye or leaving for a long period of time. I’m just...going somewhere and then coming back. I don’t even have anyone to worry.” 

“Well, that’s stupid,” Laura says as she slows at a red light. “We always worry. I worry when you walk down the street.”

“I’m not your five year old,” Natasha points out moodily. Laura glances over and gives her a sympathetic smile.

“I know you’re not. But you know what I mean.”

Natasha bites down on her lip and nods at the windshield. “I want to be here.”

Laura smiles again, reaching over with her free hand to grip Natasha’s palm while continuing to steer competently with one hand. “I know you do, Nat.”

The rest of the drive is filled with quiet; halfway through Laura puts on the radio and Natasha lets the sounds of classic country fill her ears, too lazy to playfully argue with Laura to change it because she really doesn’t care for country and Laura knows it. Not paying attention to the music allows her to zone out, a comfortable silence taking over rather than a potentially awkward one, until Laura pulls into the departures lane at Des Moines International.

“This is my favorite part of flying commercial,” Natasha mutters as she glances out the window, making a face at the many individuals pulling suitcases out of their cars and embracing in tearful goodbyes. Laura puts a hand on her shoulder.

“At least you got one of the only direct flights out of here, so that has to count for something.” She pauses. “You going to be okay? I mean, you’re not exactly off the hook, either.”

Natasha reaches into her pocket and flashes her passport. “Old aliases still come in handy. And I’m in a better position than Clint,” she reminds Laura as she leans over for a long kiss. When she pulls away, Laura puts a hand on her hair.

“Please be careful. And tell Wanda I miss her.”

“Of course,” Natasha answers softly. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Nat.”

She grabs her bag and gets out of the car, waiting until Laura has pulled away from the curb before she walks inside. By the time she lands in New York, hails a cab, and gets dropped off about a mile from the Avengers Compound, it’s nearly night. There are a few lights on in the building but, Natasha notices a little wistfully, most of the rooms and especially the bottom floor that she knows houses the training area are dark. 

She pauses at the door, assuming the entrance code is the same, though she doesn’t put it past Tony to have changed it in light of everything that’s happened since the last time she was here. Surprisingly, the door opens after she punches in a long string of numbers, and she walks inside. Wandering down the wide and polished halls, she enters common room that’s entirely empty, save for Tony sitting in a chair with a glass of scotch.

“I leave and you just decide to start drinking again?” Natasha asks as a way of announcing herself, even though she knows he’s heard her come in. Tony turns slowly and gets up.

“I thought we should toast to your arrival, since it’s been forever.” 

He looks more tired than Natasha expects, his goatee peppered with a little more salt than she thinks should be normal after only a few months away. Her heart swells a little bit with a familiar emotion; for as much as she still harbored feelings of frustration and annoyance at Tony for what he’d said to her after the airport fight and what she knows he'd said to Clint in the Raft, she’s known him too long to swear him off entirely.

“Good to see you too, Tony.” 

He walks forward and places a hand on her shoulder. “Quinjet’s in its usual place in the launch pad. I trust you don’t need a refresher on how to fly it.”

“I think I’ll be okay,” Natasha responds sarcastically. She pauses, glancing around the empty space, wanting to say more but not sure what she _should_ say. She hadn't been blind to the fact that everything was divided now, but seeing Tony like this made the realization even more clear.

“Thank you.”

Tony looks confused. “For what?”

“For what you did for Clint. The whole house arrest deal. I know it wasn’t easy going to Ross and working something out like that.”

Tony snorts. “Clint didn’t exactly seem too happy to be told he was under official house arrest.” 

“I know,” says Natasha. “But he does appreciate it. And _I_ appreciate it. It…it helps knowing that there’s someone other than me looking out for his family.”

Tony seems to soften at her words, his shoulders slumping. “I still feel bad he ended up in the Raft as a part of all this.”

Natasha falls quiet, because she can’t really refute that -- as much as she could accept an apology, it _was_ Tony’s fault that all of this had happened in the first place. Then again, it was her fault that Laura and Clint had such a hard time trusting her for so many years. She’d thrown engagement rings into the trash, left home for long periods of time after promising to stay, and missed a child’s birth entirely.

“You’re trying to fix it,” she says finally. “That’s something I understand -- trying to fix things with people you care about and help them get to trust you again.” She turns to leave, and Tony clears his throat behind her.

“Natasha.”

When she turns back around, she notices he’s rubbing his palm against the back of his neck the same way Clint does when he’s embarrassed about something or is feeling sheepish.

“What?”

“There’s something I didn’t tell Clint, that you need to know.”

Natasha’s stomach does a nose dive and she forces herself to hold back a reaction that would probably even make Tony suspicious.

“What exactly do I need to know?”

Tony exhales slowly. “Ross has been checking in.”

Natasha blinks, because it’s not the answer she’s expecting but something about the words chill her all the same. “What do you mean checking in?”

“I mean, he wants to know where everyone is at any given time. So as long as I can tell him I haven’t seen Cap or Sam or Vision or Wanda, or that Lang and Barton are at home, and as long as I’m here and not involved with anyone, he doesn’t have anything to go off of. I’ve gotten that trust with him. But he asks about everyone who is considered a fugitive, including you.”

Natasha swallows. “Me?”

“Yes,” Tony says. “You. You were wanted too, remember?”

“I remember,” Natasha says sharply, taking a deep breath to stop herself from lashing out. “But I didn’t know Ross still cared about me, especially once everyone got out of the Raft and Steve went rogue.”

“You’re missing the point, which is so unlike you,” Tony responds. “Ross wants to know where you are. I’m telling him I haven’t seen you, because until now, I haven’t. And I’m done putting people in danger by accident, so I’m going to keep telling him I haven’t seen you. But it’s not my fault if I tell him I don’t know where you are and he sends someone to check in on Clint for whatever reason and you’re there, because I know that’s where you’ve been spending most of your time. And --”

“And if he finds out I’m there…” Natasha trails off, feeling sick. “His whole family could be in danger.” _My whole family could be in danger_ , she thinks, but doesn’t say out loud. Tony’s grim look confirms what she’s said.

“Natasha,” he says quietly. “I just…I swear, I didn’t know. When I went to Clint to give him the house arrest deal, this wasn’t part of it. This started happening a few days ago. I was going to call him and let him know, but then you were coming and...and I didn’t want him to get in any more trouble.”

“So you’re telling me instead, so I can be the bearer of bad news,” Natasha says.

Tony winces. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry we’re all still dealing with this.”

Natasha’s throat burns, but she manages to keep her facial expressions neutral. “Me too.” She finally does turn back around, heading to the elevator that she knows will take her down to the launch pad. “Like I said, I’ll have the jet back in less than two days,” she adds loudly over her shoulder. “Don’t isolate yourself too much while I’m gone.”

It’s easy enough to find the quinjet and easier still to fall back into habits she’s never really lost, turning on the engine and piloting her way out of the Compound and into the sky. When her satellites alert her that she’s about ten miles out from the building where Wanda is staying, she sends a quick text and navigates the quinjet to the top of the next building over, lowering it slowly. By the time she’s reached the ground and opened the landing pad, Wanda is waiting for her, wearing a long-sleeved maroon shirt, a dark skirt over black leggings, and high combat boots. She holds a small bag in her right hand and her dark hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun.

Natasha gets up from the pilot seat and meets her halfway up the ramp, embracing her in a tight hug. Whereas Tony had looked tired and rundown, Wanda looks the opposite -- whole and healthy, a glow that Natasha can tell comes from being someone who is actually _living_ without looking over her shoulder or thinking about how much wrong she’s done.

“Thank you for coming.”

Natasha smiles as she walks back to the pilot seat, closing the launch pad door. “I know I wasn’t your first choice. I hope that’s okay.”

Wanda smiles back as she settles into one of the spare seats. “It is. I understand.”

Somewhere in her brain, she hears Laura complaining about how ludicrous it is to fly to New York, only to fly halfway across the world and then fly _back_ to New York, but she tunes out her voice in favor of concentrating on the sky.

“Clint says that you’re getting better with your powers,” Natasha offers once they’ve been en route for a period of time.

“I think I am,” Wanda answers thoughtfully. “I try not to practice too much because it’s hard to find a place where I am really off the grid. I have actually gone back to the building a few times -- just to practice.” 

“You’ve seen Tony?” Natasha asks, a little surprised, though she realizes maybe she shouldn’t be. As much as Vision was a part of Wanda, he was also a part of Tony and always would be. Admittedly, part of her feels slightly more settled knowing that Tony actually _did_ know where most of his friends and former teammates were, and he still wasn’t about to give anyone up.

“Yes,” Wanda confirms. “He mostly leaves me alone and lets me practice on my own. Sometimes I do sit with him and talk to him about things. I used to worry about him because he was alone so often. I know it’s not good to be alone for a long time. But lately, he’s seemed better.”

“Good,” Natasha says, startling herself at how reassured she feels. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“How is Clint?” Wanda asks in return. Natasha glances at the controls before deciding she can put them on autopilot for the time being and take her eyes off the sky.

“He’s good,” she says, turning around in her seat. “Trying to keep busy now that he’s officially retired.” 

“He was never good at that,” Wanda says, shaking her head. Natasha laughs.

“Believe me, I know.”

“And Laura?”

“As busy as ever.” Natasha places her hands on her knees and gets up to stretch. “Still working from time to time, but she’s spending more time at home now. She says to tell you she misses you. Cooper’s getting better with his archery and getting into more school activities. Lila’s writing stories now, not just reading them. Nathaniel’s going to be walking and talking soon.” She pauses to let her updates sink in. “How’s Vision?” 

“He’s good,” Wanda says, a proud but shy tone coloring her voice, which Natasha notices has lost the thickness of its trademark Sokovian accent. “I think it’s been nice being away from everything. We’ve been trying to see if it works between us. You know, not being Avengers or anything. Just...being here.” 

“And?” Natasha asks, hoping she’s not overstepping her bounds. Wanda glances up at her and grins.

“And, I think it’s working.”

Natasha can’t help the warm feeling that comes over her; she’d never quite taken to Wanda the way Clint and Laura had in terms of feeling like a parent, but it didn’t mean she didn’t care about Wanda fiercely after all they’d been through, especially when it came to her having some semblance of a normal life.

“I’m happy for you,” she says honestly. “As long as you stay safe.”

Wanda nods. “Yes, I know. Tony makes Vision check in with him every other week. Just to make sure. So far, we seem to be okay. And we are careful when we go out. Vision is trying to work on a disguise so we can go out more, but he’s not exactly there yet.” She stifles a yawn as she says the words, and Natasha nods towards the makeshift cot that’s set up next to Wanda.

“Might be worth it to sleep awhile before we get back to New York,” Natasha says. “If you want to go straight to the cemetery and all.”

“You’re right,” she says, though Natasha notices she doesn’t make a move to lie down, instead staring at Natasha with a furrowed brow. “Can I ask you something?” 

Natasha frowns. “Sure.” 

“Do you think this is really it?”

Natasha waits to see if Wanda will elaborate or if she’s hoping Natasha will pick up on what she’s really asking.

“Is what really it?”

“This,” Wanda says softly. “Me and Vision having a normal life. Clint not working. The Avengers not being around. The world not falling apart as we know it. Do you think this is how it will be now?”

Natasha swallows, because part of her wants to lie and tell Wanda yes -- because she wants at least one person in her life who she cares about to believe there can be some happiness at the end of the fight. She wants it to be true for herself, too, but she knows she can’t be that selfish. If she’s learned anything about the way the world works, it’s that nothing is ever really over. Nothing is ever really done.

Until now, she’d been able to keep Tony’s words out of her mind, pushing them to the back of her brain. But Wanda’s question and her soft, urgent tone makes her eyes glass over before she can stop her emotions. She grits her teeth; she knows she needs to deal with Tony’s news -- and she will -- but she can’t do it right now. She has to at least wait until she’s home.

If she can even come home. Natasha wonders if Tony knows that by telling her this information, it meant that now  _she_ was the one looking over her shoulder. _She_ was the one who had to worry, not Clint -- however oddly that twist of fate worked out.

“I hope so,” she says, feeling like it’s the only thing she can offer, before getting up and going back to the controls.

 

**2018**

 

Three days after Thanos’ finger snap, the world still hasn’t done much in the way of getting itself back to normal, at least where Wakanda is concerned.

There’s talk of an official ceremony for Shuri to be sworn in as the country’s new ruler, though for now, she’s simply making decisions in her brother’s stead and trying to bring order back to her people. While most of Wakanda seems to be picking up the pieces, there’s a definite sense of gloom and discomfort that hangs over the city, the palace walls, and everyone in them.

Natasha finds Steve sitting in the middle of the battlefield, surrounded by dead husks of grass and large mounds of dirt. She sits down beside him and puts her hand on his knee. 

“How’s Barton doing?”

“Better,” Natasha answers. “A little bit.” She looks down at the ground, unable to figure out how to tell him the rest, but Steve puts his arm around her shoulder and squeezes it tightly.

“I’m sorry. I know they were your family, too.”

Natasha smiles, because Steve can’t know the truth of his words. “I don’t really believe they’re gone,” she says. “I know they are, in my head -- Clint told me what happened. The same thing that happened here. But I can’t make myself believe it.”

“I don’t think any of us can,” Steve says dejectedly. “And I hate that I can’t see what’s next. I hate that I don’t even know what to do. Half of us are gone, Nat.”

“Only half,” Natasha reminds him. “Haven’t you thought about who’s left?” 

Steve draws his legs up to his chest, placing his chin on his knees. “Yeah,” he says. “Us.” 

“Original flavor,” Natasha deadpans. Steve barks out a harsh laugh.

“I missed your jokes, Nat.”

“Not bad for a spy, right?” Natasha smirks. “I’ve still got it.”

“At least one of us does.” Steve pauses. “Now that you have Clint again, are you going to stay here?”

Natasha exhales slowly, breathing in the crisp Wakandan air. It reminds her of the air at the farm, the cold, undiluted wind that always seemed different just because it was coming from a place that was removed from the rest of the world.

“I don’t know,” she replies. “But even if we don’t, there’s something I have to do first.”

She gets up abruptly while Steve gives her a quizzical look. Walking back towards the palace, she stops halfway and veers left, back towards the open field but this time into the forest, where she’d seen Bruce disappear earlier. It’s not hard to spot him even without his Hulk form; he’s sitting on the ground with his eyes closed, spine straight and body tense.

“Is meditation the new form of Hulk therapy?”

Bruce opens one eye slowly, squinting at her. “If you can believe it, you taught me the thing you’re trying to make fun of right now.”

She had, Natasha realizes with a jolt of memory. Meditation had been one of the things she’d suggested when trying to help him control his Hulk side, though she’d never seen him actually use it.

“Should I be worried about you right now?”

Bruce snorts loudly. “No,” he says, leaning back on his hands. “I don’t think you have to be worried about me, unless you have an obsession with the Hulk that you’ve never told me about. I haven’t been able to get him to show up this whole time. It’s why I was in the armor to begin with.” 

Natasha looks at him in confusion. “What?”

Bruce shrugs, getting up. “I can’t make the Hulk appear,” he says, shoving his hands into his pants pockets. “It’s like he hates me suddenly. He just won’t come out, no matter what I do. So until I figure it out, it’s just me.”

“Why?” 

“I don’t know,” Bruce repeats firmly. Natasha swallows past a lump in her throat, closing her eyes.

“What happened to you?”

“Me?” Bruce asks sarcastically. “Or us?”

Natasha hesitates and opens her eyes again. “I just...I want to talk.”

“Oh, so you’re ready to have a real conversation?” Bruce’s voice is dripping with contempt, and Natasha clenches her jaw.

“Well, we might die the next time Thanos decides to snap his fingers, so shouldn’t we at least say we hate each other to our faces?”

Bruce blinks rapidly. “I don’t hate you, Natasha. But I don’t know if you can say the same for me.” 

Natasha sighs, feeling defeated. “I don’t hate you,” she admits. “It’s not hate that made me yell at you before. It’s...I’m hurt. And I’m confused. You just showed up here after three years of nothing and expected me to say hi and fall back into what we were before and that’s…” She trails off. “Considering how we left things, that’s a lot for me to take in.”

“I never expected us to fall back into what we were,” Bruce says quietly. “But I did think that by leaving that day, I was making it better for you.”

“You gave me hope, and then you took it away,” Natasha responds, trying not to lash out again. “How is that making it better?”

“You _used_ me and forced me to turn into the Hulk, because you didn’t need Bruce Banner in Sokovia,” he responds just as harshly. “Which is exactly what I’d been telling myself for years, even though I thought maybe you actually wanted the man and not the monster. Did you ever really love me, Natasha? Or were you just using me because you thought I was your best option?”

Natasha looks down at the ground. “I thought I loved you,” she says, because she knows she has to be honest and that’s an honest answer. “But I thought I loved a lot of people in my life. And the thing is --”

“I know,” Bruce interrupts. “You love Clint, don’t you?”

Natasha’s words catch in her throat, because she has no idea how she’s supposed to answer that. It’s obviously true, but it’s not like Bruce didn’t know about Laura.

“Love is...complicated,” she decides. “It’s why I’ve never really been with anyone.” She feels shitty as she says the words, knowing that she’s lying through her teeth, and tries to shove the feeling away. “I know we need to talk about everything that’s happened. But I don’t know what we’re supposed to say to each other, Bruce. I really don’t.”

Saying it out loud somehow makes her feel better because once she says the words, she realizes it’s partly why she’s been feeling so frustrated. She _doesn’t_ know what to say. The path to something between them had been opened and then closed and then forgotten about -- and now that it’s been opened again, Natasha has had enough space to know that if she had a choice, if she could go back, she would have never opened it in the first place.

“Maybe we don’t say anything,” Bruce suggests. “Maybe we just acknowledge that we both hurt each other and that we can’t fix it.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Natasha says in frustration. “I won’t just sweep this under the rug. I’ve waited too fucking long to actually say something to you.”

“So _say_ something,” Bruce snaps. “And stop talking in circles, Natasha. Because if you want _me_ to say something to _you_ , I’ll tell you that I don’t regret it. I don’t regret any of it. You may have hurt me and I may have hurt you, but you let me feel like a human, and I hope I made you feel like one also.”

Natasha stares into his eyes, trying to remember a time when she felt comfortable with them -- when she was trying to find something in them. When she thought she _had_ found something in them. “You did make me feel like a human,” she admits. “And that’s why it hurt when you left. I don’t put my faith in people blindly.”

“But you put your faith in me,” Bruce observes. “Why?”

Natasha swallows hard. “Because the world was falling apart, and everyone had someone. I didn’t have anything. I had to have something to hold onto.” She thinks of Laura, of talks on the porch, of the fact that Laura had picked up so well on Natasha’s feelings when she’d thought she was being so cryptic. She holds her arms out and Bruce gives her a wary look, but walks towards her slowly. She allows herself to hug him gently; until now, she hadn’t realized how much she needed to feel the physical touch of another human. Clint was her anchor, but everything had left her feeling so shaken and lost that she needed to know she had other people who were still here, too.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for,” says Natasha. “For your sake, and for the Hulk’s sake.” She turns and walks away, heading back to the palace. Steve is no longer sitting in the grass where Natasha has left him, but Clint has taken his place. He’s lying on his back, staring up at the sky, and Natasha glances down at him. 

“I feel like all anyone is doing here is sitting around,” she says.

Clint snorts. “What the fuck are we _supposed_ to do? Everyone we know is dead.” 

Natasha extends her hand and he takes it, allowing her to pull him up. They stand together for a moment, hand in hand, the quiet wind picking up across the open field until Clint’s fingers find the nape of her neck. He massages her skin gently, running his knuckles over her flesh. 

“Whenever I needed to be comforted, she just put her hand on my neck,” says Clint, his voice so soft it almost gets carried away by the wind. “Just like that. And it was so subtle and sometimes the kids wouldn’t even know she was doing anything. But it calmed me. It was just...it was what we did when we needed to comfort each other.”

Natasha tries to smile. “We’re going to get her back, you know. I promise, Clint. I don’t know how, but…but we are.”

Clint sighs. “Yeah, but you’re right. We’re all just sitting around and going through the motions. No one knows what to do. And no one’s going to do anything from here.”

Natasha shakes her head. “No,” she says, thinking of Steve’s earlier question. She meets his eyes. “Not from here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, fair warning, this will definitely end up being longer than ten chapters...but I'm not sure how long past that it'll stretch yet, so I'm not going to change the chapter count until I have a better idea. I don't want people to think they're reading something that will never be completed, and I don't want to keep changing chapter numbers on everyone. So this is just a heads up that even though it looks like we're halfway there...we probably are a little less than that and there's still much more to come. :) Thank you to everyone who has been reading, leaving kudos and comments, and rec'ing! I hope you're enjoying the ride, and your interactions mean the world to me.


	6. Chapter 6

**2016**

 

The one good thing about the area where Wanda has chosen to bury Pietro is that it’s in a part of upstate New York that’s known for landscape, cows, and not much else. Natasha has no problem finding a place to land the quinjet after cloaking it in stealth mode, though she realizes afterwards that she hasn’t thought far enough ahead to find a motel in the area if they came too late to make the actual visit.

“We can rest here and go in the morning,” Wanda suggests after Natasha has landed. “There’s another cot over here, and I’m used to sleeping in different places.”

Natasha sighs; she feels lousy and she knows it’s not just from traveling all day. “I’m sorry. Normally I’m better than this. And Clint would’ve probably had everything all figured out...I feel like I’m flying by the seat of my pants.”

“He’s a dad,” Wanda says knowingly. “Planning is what he’s used to.”

Natasha can’t help the laugh that escapes. “Yes and no,” she admits. “He’s pretty organized when it comes to things with his family, but if it wasn’t for Laura running the house, he’d probably fall apart.” She stretches her arm over her head. “Or Lila would take over. For someone who’s almost six, she’s surprisingly intuitive.”

Wanda smiles as she looks at the ground. “Thank you again for doing this,” she says as she sits down on the other cot. “I know it isn’t exactly a fun mission, but it means a lot.”

“I know how it feels,” Natasha offers. When Wanda looks at her in confusion, she shrugs. “My parents. They died when I was younger.”

“I’m sorry,” Wanda says softly. “Were you with them?”

Natasha bites back another laugh. “No,” she says shortly. “I wasn’t. I was taken from my home when I was young. I didn’t even know that they died until years later…and I never went looking for them. A few years ago, we found out that SHIELD was infiltrating Hydra.” She pauses, playing with her hands. “I lost a lot during that time. I lost the organization I thought was redeeming me. I lost some friends. I lost a lot of trust. I had to take some time for myself afterwards, so I decided to go see if I could find where my parents were buried.”

“Did you?” Wanda asks curiously.

Natasha nods. “Yeah. Unmarked graves. Small ones. I don’t know if that was even them, or if someone just pretended to put them there…but I left flowers anyway.” She gets up and starts taking off the sweatshirt she’s wearing, preparing to throw on a long-sleeved shirt that she’s pulled from her bag. Wanda turns around, allowing her some privacy, and silence hangs in the air between them. 

“Did it help?” Wanda asks, her back still turned. Natasha quickly trades her jeans for yoga pants, making the switch with ease.

“A little,” Natasha says, sitting back on the cot. “It helped a little, to know that I could have that closure. I assume it’s the same thing with you.”

Wanda turns around and Natasha notices her eyes look a little brighter than usual. “I knew people would tell me that I shouldn’t bury him anywhere,” she says softly. “Tony even said he had people who could take care of it. But I didn’t like the idea that I wouldn’t know where he was. We were barely apart when we were alive, and it didn’t seem right that I should leave him alone.”

Natasha nods. “I remember you stayed on the rock, when he told you to leave.”

“Yes,” Wanda says curtly. “And I still don’t know if that was a good idea. But it doesn’t matter. I stayed once, and I regret it, so I won’t regret making any other choice when it comes to protecting my brother even though he’s dead.”

Natasha smiles sadly. “No one is judging you, Wanda. I promise.” She lies back; she’s not necessarily tired but she’s tired of thinking about everything that she’s going to have to deal with when she tells Clint and Laura the latest issue with this stupid house arrest situation. She doesn’t even realize her and Wanda have stopped talking until Wanda timidly breaks the silence, as if she’s afraid she’s going to say something wrong.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Natasha lies, closing her eyes. “It’s just been a long week.”

When she opens her eyes again, not even having remembered falling asleep, the jet is mostly dark. A quick glance out the windshield shows that dawn must be close to breaking, and she stifles a yawn as she sits up.

“You wanna go?”

Wanda sits up slowly and shakes out her hair. Natasha furrows her brow as she takes her in with the help of the early dawn.

“You didn’t sleep.”

“I slept enough,” Wanda says in a voice that clearly implies she doesn’t want any further conversation on the matter. “Besides, I wasn’t the one flying all day.”

“Touche,” Natasha replies with a small smile. She grabs for the clothes she’s discarded earlier, dressing quickly while Wanda turns away, and then roots around for a few things to throw into a small bag. After opening the landing pad, she walks off the quinjet, Wanda following close behind. Natasha waits until they’ve exited the jet before she double checks the stealth mode, making sure they can leave it hiding in plain sight while they’re gone.

As she leaves the jet, she realizes she’s not entirely sure where to go because while Wanda had given her a location, she hadn’t given her specific directions. Fortunately, Wanda seems to understand, or if she doesn’t, she simply doesn’t care. She takes the lead and strides ahead, leaving Natasha to follow her trail. After about another fifteen minutes of walking, Natasha turns into a small, closed-off cemetery just as the dawn is beginning to peek its way into existence.

Wanda stops at the edge of the cemetery, tipping her head towards the sky. Just as Natasha is going to ask if she remembers where to go, she takes off again, her long sweater flapping behind her. Natasha continues to follow at a slower pace, and when Wanda stops at a small clearing under a tree, she stops next to her.

“It’s a nice place,” Natasha says quietly. Wanda looks at her and smiles.

“I thought so. Is it a nice place too? For your parents?”

“No,” Natasha says in a low voice. “It was a chain-link fence and some overgrown weeds. Definitely not a nice place.”

Wanda kneels down and for the first time, Natasha notices that the grave is mostly unmarked. There’s some small scripture on the bronze plate covering the grave, what looks like old Romanian, and Natasha suspects this isn’t just because of tradition. Wanda probably didn’t want people to know where her brother was located. The thought makes her sad, because she wonders if that’s what the people who buried her parents -- if anyone even buried them at all -- thought when they put them into the ground.

“In a true religious tradition, we would have a service and give him a proper grave,” says Wanda, kneeling down to run her hand over the faded wording. “I had a grave stone for him but it didn't feel right to bring it. I just wanted to at least be here.”

“It’s important to you,” Natasha says, kneeling down next to her. “You’re his family.”

“I am,” Wanda says with a small smile. “But now I have other family, too.”

Natasha takes Wanda’s hand and makes herself comfortable on the ground. She sits in silence, thinking of Pietro, of Laura, of Tony and Steve and all of her teammates, and lets the sun rise warmly against her back.

 

***

 

When Clint comes downstairs after helping Cooper with his homework, he immediately senses that something is off. For one thing, Nathaniel has been crying non-stop for the past half an hour, causing Clint to re-think everything he’s ever known about parenting -- he didn’t even know his child _could_ cry this much or have this much water in him. For another, Lila has been noticeably quiet and the only reason he hasn’t been more concerned is because he’s spent most of his time after dinner with middle school math, in addition to catching up on bills and home improvement plans that have fallen by the wayside. Grateful for the quiet (Nathaniel’s screaming aside), he hasn’t been focused on why he could get so much for done without any interruption.

He’s almost afraid to look at Laura, whose frazzled face screams _I’ve had enough._ The lines around her mouth accentuate that fact so clearly, he thinks that even without over fifteen years of marriage, he wouldn’t be dumb enough to miss them. Clint tiptoes into the kitchen where Laura is holding the screaming baby, one hand firmly gripping a mug of coffee.

“Hey, uh...I’m here if you need husband duties,” he offers tentatively.

Laura groans. “What I need is new kids,” she says, her voice short. “Don’t tell anyone I said that. Get Lila out of that fort and start her bedtime routine.” Laura shakes her head as Nathaniel grips his mom’s shirt and continues to whimper. “This one’s driving me crazy.”

“No problem,” Clint says, saluting sharply. He walks into the living room, glancing over at the intricate blanket fort that’s been constructed out of couch pillows and old sheets and a quilt, and clears his throat.

“Knock knock,” he says cheerfully as he pretends to bang on the door. “Time for bed, Lila baby.”

There’s no immediate response, and Clint frowns. He peeks inside and sees a small huddled figure at the far end of the blankets, facing away from him. He glances back at Laura and then gets up, going to the pantry. Thankfully, Laura’s too preoccupied to pay him any mind as he roots around for a bag of cookies from the farmer’s market, and he manages to get in and out of her vantage point without any suspicion.

Clint walks back towards the tent and sits down in front of it. He places the bag of cookies just inside the flap and leans back a little.

“I heard you had a bad day,” he says conversationally. “Daddy had a bad day too. I was sad this morning when I woke up.”

Lila still doesn’t respond, but in the shadows of the tent backlit by the living room light, Clint manages to glimpse a hand reaching out to grab a cookie.

“Daddy likes to talk when he’s sad. Wanna share cookies and talk?”

The tent flap lifts slowly, allowing Clint to finally sees his daughter. Her face is downturned, but she holds a cookie out. Clint smiles as he crawls inside carefully.

“Thanks for letting me in.”

“S’okay,” Lila mumbles. “There were cookies.”

“Yeah, there were.” Clint tries to adjust himself in the small tent so that he doesn’t knock everything over. “Come on, wanna tell me what’s wrong?”

Lila swallows and moves closer, settling into his lap. “You first,” she says with all the insistence of a child who needs to be in charge. Clint holds back a laugh, knowing it’s an inappropriate response.

“Okay,” he agrees. “I had a bad day because mommy yelled at me and I lost my favorite shirt. Your turn.” 

Lila’s face twists into a frown again and she hands Clint the cookie that she's bitten into. “I don’t want you to go away.”

Clint looks down at her, puzzled. “Who said I was going away? I’m not going anywhere.” 

Lila looks at the floor and Clint closes his eyes, suddenly understanding.

“Is this about Auntie Nat? Did you think of Auntie Nat leaving and get sad because you thought we were all leaving?” 

Lila nods and Clint pulls her closer. “Lila, we’re not going anywhere,” he promises. “Me or mommy or Cooper or Tasha-Nate.” He pokes her on the nose, trying to get her to smile. “ We’re _all_ staying right here with you.”

“Promise?”

“Absolutely promise,” Clint repeats, breaking her cookie in half. Lila smiles tentatively and then takes the half he hands her, eating slowly. 

“Mommy doesn’t know I’m having cookies,” she says with a giggle, and Clint relaxes.

“No, she doesn’t. And we’re going to keep it our little secret, yeah? Because we now how mommy feels about cookies.”

“Our secret,” Lila repeats, her words garbled as she shoves the rest of the cookie in her mouth.

“How about you finish your cookie and we’ll get ready for bed together?”

Lila shrugs, and Clint takes the opportunity to move out of the tent with her still mostly curled into his body. Together, they walk upstairs as Clint casts a glance at the messy living room. He decides that keeping Lila on track is more important than cleaning at the moment, and makes a resolution to do it when she’s actually in bed.

Nathaniel is still yelling, though he doesn’t sound as loud as before, and Lila gives him a worried look as she climbs onto the bathroom step stool.

“Why is Tasha-Nate crying?”

“Dunno,” Clint says honestly as he helps her with her toothbrush. “Sometimes, babies cry a lot. Your brother cried a lot. So did you.”

“Nu uh!” Lila insists with a mouth full of toothpaste. “Mommy says I was a good baby!”

“You were,” Clint says with a smile, playing with her hair. He wipes her mouth when she’s done brushing and then leads her into her bedroom, helping her into her princess nightgown. Lila crawls into bed obediently, grabbing for her favorite stuffed wolf.

“We finished that one,” Lila informs him haughtily as Clint plucks a book from the overflowing shelves. He glances down and laughs quietly.

“Guess we did,” he agrees, recognizing the cover of one of the more recent _Babysitter’s Club_ books. “How about an old favorite, then?”

Lila perks up when Clint brings out _Little House on the Prairie_ and he settles himself onto the bed while starting to read. After two chapters, he closes the book and leans over to kiss his daughter.

“Mommy will be in to say goodnight, okay? Love you, Lila baby.”

Lila nods and hunches under the covers as Clint gets up. “Love you, daddy.”

He closes the door and stretches, letting the tension and tiredness flow through his limbs before he walks into his own bedroom. He’s surprised to find Laura stretched out on the bed, fully clothed and asleep, with Nathaniel passed out next to her. Clint leans over and kisses her, moving hair back from her ear. She opens one eye slowly, squinting. 

“You wanna change, or fall asleep in your clothes?”

“Sorry,” Laura mutters with a yawn. “I just needed to close my eyes for five seconds.” 

“Uh huh.” Clint glances at the clock, knowing he doesn’t need to remind her that five seconds have really turned into almost half an hour. “Well, Lila’s finally in bed. I guess we should get him in bed too?”

Laura gives him a look. “I can’t decide if I want to risk moving him or not. I can’t deal with another hour-long tantrum.”

“Odds are he tired himself out,” Clint offers, keeping his voice low as he takes off his shirt and throws it across the room.

Laura sits up in bed. “Everything okay?” 

“Yeah.” Clint pauses, then shakes his head. “No. I guess Lila was triggered by Nat leaving. She seemed to have it in her head that we were all leaving and got upset.”

Laura swallows, looking pained. “It’s ingrained in her,” she says sadly. “I don’t know if she can help it. And it didn’t help that we had to pick up and move suddenly when Natasha thought we were going to be under attack from Ross. But maybe like Cooper, she’ll get over it as she gets older.” She closes her eyes. “They had such different upbringings. I thought Lila would be more used to things because of the way she grew up. But it seems like it’s just affected her more.”

“They’re still good kids,” Clint says softly, knowing where Laura’s mind is headed, because he’s been in the same place more than he wants to admit. “They are.”

“I know they are,” Laura responds. She rubs her eyes and Clint sits down next to her, trying not to wake the baby.

“Hey, look. You know I’m here now. I mean, I’m not going anywhere.” He stops suddenly and tenses, holding up a hand. “Someone’s at the door.”

“What?” Laura looks confused. “How do you know?”

“Trust me,” Clint says, getting up again and pointing to his ears. He opens the door, making sure that there’s no movement otherwise -- the door to Cooper’s room is still closed with the light on, and Clint figures he’s either doing homework or just refusing to get ready for bed since it’s still early. But there’s also no barking, which means Lucky hasn’t heard whatever noise Clint has. Lila’s room is dark, save for the night light Clint can see peeking out from underneath the door frame. Clint moves downstairs slowly, stepping over the baby gate. When he gets to the bottom of the stairs, his heightened worry seeps into confused annoyance.

“Nat, why the fuck are you sneaking in like this?”

“I didn’t want to wake anyone up,” Natasha answers as she puts her bag on the ground and shakes out her hair. “You know it’s bedtime.”

“It’s barely bedtime for Lila, and Coop’s still up.” Clint crosses his arms. “If you were that concerned, you could’ve called and let us know you were coming home.”

“I know. But I just wanted to get home,” Natasha says. Her voice is tired, no doubt from traveling, but there’s something else hidden in it -- a tenseness that Clint picks up on because it's a tone she uses when something’s off that she doesn't want to address. 

“Everything go okay with Wanda?”

“Yeah.” Natasha smiles. “She’s doing well, Clint. Really well. I’m glad I went to see her. I’m glad we went to see Pietro together.”

“Well, good.” He moves his hands to his pockets and eyes her. “You know if you don’t tell me what’s wrong, that bedroom is gonna get _really_ awkward, right?”

Natasha sighs. “I’d rather not talk about this in the house. Can we --”

“Nate’s sleeping,” Clint informs her. “And he literally just fell asleep after screaming his head off for an hour. But I can see if Laura’s okay with the barn.”

Natasha nods. Clint rolls his eyes, unable to help himself.

“Right.” He turns and walks back upstairs, finding Laura standing outside the bedroom door, looking wary.

“Clint?”

“Natasha,” he says, motioning with one hand. Laura’s face morphs into confusion.

“Why the hell did she sneak in like that?”

“Dunno,” Clint says, though he feels like he probably does. There was absolutely a reason that Natasha was coming back timidly, the way she used to do before she felt comfortable with them, rather than coming back and just crawling into bed. “She wants to talk, but not in the house. Do you think we can sneak to the barn?”

Laura gives him a long look. “I’d rather not. We’d have to move Nate to his crib and hope he doesn’t wake up while we’re gone. I’m fine with Coop being in the house alone now, but Lila…”

“Coop’s old enough to babysit, technically,” Clint reminds her. “And Lucky’s here.”

“That dog is _not_ a guard dog,” Laura reminds him. “He’d lick the first burglar who came in here, especially if they smelled like the woods.”

“I’m not arguing with you on that,” Clint says, holding up his hands. “But I know her, and you know her. She’s not gonna talk if she can’t do it somewhere she feels comfortable. This is clearly an adult thing.”

“And clearly something she thinks will involve a louder discussion, so she wants us away from the house,” Laura adds. “I know our wife, Clint.”

Clint watches the light in Cooper’s room switch off fully, though there’s a glow still present as well as the soft sound of beeping that Clint knows is his latest handheld video game.

Laura closes her eyes, and Clint can almost see her counting to five in her head. “Fine,” she says, walking back into the bedroom. “But if he wakes up, it’s on you.”

“Why me?” Clint asks in mock hurt. “Blame Nat!”

Laura ignores him as she picks up Nathaniel from the bed, gently placing him on her shoulder as she walks out of the room and across the hall. Clint watches from a distance as she masterfully glides from one room to the other, walking out without a sound from either Lila (who he assumes has long fallen asleep) or Nathaniel.

“I really do love you,” Clint says as she closes the door quietly.

Laura gives him a tired kiss. “I love you too.”

She grabs the baby monitor from the bedroom and then walks downstairs. Clint follows, noticing that her body relaxes when she hugs Natasha, who is still standing in the foyer.

“I missed you,” she says softly, moving her head against her hair. Natasha puts her cheek against Laura’s scalp.

“Me too.”

Clint lets them have their moment by walking forward and opening the door, heading to the barn alone. He stops with his hand on the door when Natasha clears her throat behind them, turning around. The deep twilight engulfs the farm, bright silver stars dotting the vast terrain of sky as a quiet wind picks up over the rolling hills. Clint closes his eyes and thinks of all the years he’s spent here, the chill of apple picking in the fall, the sweltering of sprinkler playing in the summer, the warmth of afternoon walks in the spring, the frigid tundra of ice in the winter. His eyes prickle as he considers how safe and how removed he is here, and how much danger he’s potentially put his family in over the past few months.

“I needed to talk to you.”

“Clearly,” Laura responds, placing the baby monitor on the ground. “What’s up, Nat?”

Natasha pulls at her long red hair, a pained look shadowing her face. “I went to Tony’s to get a quinjet so I could take Wanda to see Pietro. He told me he had an update on your house arrest.”

Clint narrows his eyes. “What kind of update?”

“I guess Ross is asking Tony about us,” Natasha says slowly. “Not me, specifically. Everyone who is supposed to be a fugitive. And Tony is actually protecting us -- he’s telling him he hasn’t seen anyone.” She pauses, allowing the words to sink in. “He’s mostly concerned with everyone who was on the Raft, since in his eyes, those are the people who violated the Accords. But I’m technically on that list too, since I helped everyone escape. And Tony said he can’t control if Ross decides he’s had enough of his updates and sends someone to the farm to check on Clint for whatever reason. If I’m here -- if they find me here --” She stops and Clint sees that Laura seems to understand what Natasha is saying, because she nods.

“You’ll put us in danger.”

“ _All_ of you,” Natasha confirms, looking around at the farm. “This place, the kids. I...I can’t be responsible for that.”

“So what?” Laura’s voice is hard, and Clint’s not surprised that she’s picked up on what Natasha wants to say but hasn’t actually said. “You’re just going to leave again?”

Natasha hesitates. “You know I don’t want to do that.”

“It’s not a matter of what you _want_ to do,” Laura snaps. “It’s a matter of what you think is _right_. Because if you really didn’t want to do it, you wouldn’t consider it.”

Clint stays silent. He doesn’t want to agree with Laura, who has a valid point, but he also knows that it’s more than that -- he’s always known it’s more than that. He tentatively reaches out, putting his hand on Laura’s shoulder.

“She’s just trying to make sure we’re safe.”

“Clint’s right,” Natasha says warily. “I’m just trying to protect you.”

“You’ve been trying to protect us for _years_ , and I’m sick of it!” Laura fumes. “We don’t need to be protected! We’ve been through shit, and we’ve survived it! It’s 2016, Natasha! Not 2005! I can’t believe we’re still having this conversation!”

Clint stares at the ground; he can practically feel Laura’s anger vibrating into the soil. Before anyone can say anything else, she turns and starts walking back towards the house. Natasha takes off immediately and Clint grabs the baby monitor off the ground and follows, maintaining enough distance to give them privacy while still being in earshot of their conversation. Laura stops a few yards from the house, her shoulders tight and rigid. When Natasha puts her hand on her back to turn her around, Clint can see faint tear tracks dotting her cheeks.

“I didn’t mean to get angry,” Laura says quietly. “I shouldn’t have.”

“You should have,” Natasha responds. “You’re allowed to be angry, Laura. And I’m also allowed to tell you why I think protecting you is something I need to take seriously.”

Laura lets out a deep sigh that disappears into the wind. “I know you want to protect me. I’m not angry at you for that.”

“So what _are_ you angry at me for?” Natasha asks as Clint walks closer, closing the distance between them.

“Where will you go?”

Clint sees Natasha’s face crease at the question responding to a question. “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe I’ll see what Steve and Sam have been up to -- if I can find them. Maybe they can use a hand with whatever they’re doing off the grid.”

Laura looks around the farm and folds her arms over her chest.

“Check-ins.”

“What?”

“Check-ins,” Laura repeats. “Real check-ins, if you’re going to go away. Weekly visits. I don’t care if you think it’ll put us in danger. Come home for waffle Sundays. Be here for a movie night. Pick a day that you’re not running around, I don’t care where you are. But I want you to come home.”

“And you think that will make things different?” Clint asks. Natasha and Laura both turn to him, and he almost feels bad for speaking up until Laura’s look softens.

“I don’t know,” she says, turning to look at Natasha again. “But I love you. And I love our family. And I have to believe that if we make the effort to do a little more than what we used to do in the past, it’ll make some kind of difference.” She takes Natasha’s hand and squeezes it tightly. “I know you want to be here. I know we want you here. I’ve always allowed you to do everything at your own pace, to be in this family on your own terms...so maybe we just need to start thinking of things the same way I would think of things with Clint when he was at SHIELD. Just because he wasn’t home all the time didn’t make him less of a husband. And just because you’re not here because you need to be away from us for whatever reason, it doesn’t make you less of a wife.”

“I’m never not going to be here,” Natasha says, looking up at the sky, and Clint can see the parallel tear tracks reflected in the moonlight. “Check-ins or not. You need to know that by now, Laura. You of all people, who always let me be comfortable here.”

“I know,” Laura says. “We know. And I’m never not going to be here, either.” She pauses, and the baby monitor crackles to life as Nate lets out a small cry that bleeds into the night sky.

“ _We’re_ never not going to be here.”

 

**2018**

 

With everything that’s gone on, Clint’s worried that it’s going to be too hard to leave Wakanda -- as it turns out, it’s not hard at all.

The palace is mostly in disarray, Shuri still trying to acclimate to her new duties and Wakanda adapting as well as it can to the aftermath of Thanos’ destruction. Thor and Sam are barely around to begin with and Steve seems a little sad when Clint mentions he’s leaving, but Clint wonders if that’s because he obviously knows about his family and what’s happened. Bruce offers a small and polite goodbye and Clint feels like he’s being judged a little bit, though he can’t figure out why. He doesn’t bother to dwell on it.

Natasha gives Steve a long hug, and Clint thinks she hears him whisper that he’ll visit, if he can.

Clint still has the quinjet he arrived on, and Okoye gives them new coordinates that she swears are faster and more efficient than what Clint’s used to get into the country. By the time he slides back into the pilot’s seat, he feels like he’s been away for five years instead of five days.

“You want me to fly?” Natasha asks, putting a hand on his shoulder. Clint shakes his head.

“Unless you really want to? I kinda...I think I just want to keep myself occupied. Flying will help.”

Natasha nods and sits down next to him. “Would you say no to a co-pilot, then?”

“Definitely not,” he replies as Natasha buckles up. Neither of them speak until they’re well out of Wakanda, the sky a thin blue velvet that stretches in front of them.

“I remember flying here so many times,” Natasha says, leaning towards the window. “Joking with you about something stupid. Talking about what Laura would think about us coming home after being away forever. Your stupid dad jokes.”

“They weren’t stupid,” Clint protests. “You just never learned to appreciate them.”

Natasha gives him a look. “When your seven year old _still_ thinks you’re hysterical, you know you’re pandering to your audience.”

Clint glares at her, but the words shake something loose inside of him, and he realizes that he’s grateful for the fact that Natasha is pretending that things are normal when they’re really not. He’d been trying to put it out of his mind -- the fact that he was going home to a house where none of his family existed anymore, with no solution to the problem at hand. When he had set out for Wakanda, he hadn't even thought about how he might fix everything, because he had been so concerned with making sure Natasha was alive and so concerned with finding out what the hell had happened.

“We didn’t have to go back, you know,” Natasha says, her voice thick with an emotion Clint thinks he can only describe as tentative regret. Clint grits his teeth as his fingers tighten around the controllers.

“Yeah, we did.”

Clint continues to navigate; the silence and the unresolved tension reminding him of their flight to the farm after Bruce’s incident, when half his team was compromised. He hadn’t wanted to go home then, either -- he hadn't want to rip this part of the bandaid off of his private life just yet, if at all -- but he knew he had to. Natasha had wanted to go home and he had put her first, and so they had gone home.

“I can --”

“Nat, it’s fine,” he replies more harshly than he means to when Natasha speaks again sometime later. He immediately feels bad for snapping and turns, shoving the controls into cruise mode.

“Sorry.”

Natasha leans over and puts her hand on his knee. “I know, Clint.”

It’s near evening by the time they land back at the farm, and the moment Clint lands the jet in the quiet canopy of trees, he knows something feels off. When he walks out of the jet, heading towards the farm, he keeps his pace steady and tries to convince himself everything is normal. But as soon as he gets to the porch, fishing the key out of his pocket and pushing open the door, he can't ignore it. He puts his bag on the ground and walks to the kitchen, opening the big bay windows and letting the musty air find its way out of the space. Clint goes through the motions of making sure everything in the fridge is still fresh, that the appropriate lights have been turned on, that the doors that were supposed to be closed have remained closed during his time away.

“It’s quiet.”

“Too quiet,” Clint mutters, looking up from where he’s peering under the sink. He straightens up and meets Natasha’s eyes, which look a little sad and a lot tired.

“You sure you want to be back here?”

“I told you, _yes_ ,” Clint answers as he leans back against the sink.

Natasha huffs out a sigh. “Fine. Then maybe we should go get Nate and Lucky.”

“At this hour?” Clint shakes his head. “No. We’ll get them tomorrow morning.” 

“Fair enough.” Natasha pulls out a chair from the kitchen table and sits down, sinking into it slowly. “Maybe we should just go to bed, then. It’s been a long day.”

Clint nods, not knowing what else to say. He hates that he’s being this way; Natasha is his family as much as his children are but he can’t help but feel lost in the aftermath of knowing that Laura has disappeared. And yet, he’d felt that he didn’t have a choice when it came to coming home. He was useless in Wakanda, a walking graveyard of people trying to move past a tragedy they didn’t understand. He had missed his friends, he’d missed his teammates, but there was nothing he could do for them, either -- he didn’t even have unfinished business with anyone the same way Natasha did with Bruce. He knows there’s nothing he can really do here either, but at least he’s home and he can regroup more easily and be open about his still-roller coaster emotions.

Clint looks around the empty house, feeling the pang in his chest intensify, and finds himself wondering how Laura did this so often. He knew that it wasn’t easy being home alone, especially with kids involved, but he always assumed she was competent enough to keep herself busy the same way he kept himself busy when he was at SHIELD or on an assignment. He missed his family when he was away, and it was never easy, but he also knew it wasn’t like he was _abandoning_ Laura. Now, Clint realizes, as he stares around the empty house, he’s realizing it was never about competence or work. It was about someone’s physical presence not being here -- it was about a loneliness that was too heavy to describe. No matter how much Laura talked about Clint not being home, no matter how much Clint knew it hurt to be away so often, he feels like he’s never really understood what that meant until now, when _he_ was the one standing here alone, when his family was somewhere far, far away -- if they were even anywhere at all.

“Clint.”

Natasha’s still sitting at the table, but she’s looking up at him with a softly puzzled look. “You okay?”

Clint nods, trying to pull his mind together. “Yeah. Like you said, we should probably just go to bed."

Natasha looks like she wants to say something but she simply nods and gets up. As she moves through the house, Clint lets himself linger in the living room. He has to stop himself from frustratedly kicking the baby gate in front of the stairs when he finally starts to follow, and then pauses at the bathroom once he reaches the upper landing. He tries not to pay attention to the empty and dark room that is Lila and Nate’s -- Lila’s toys still in a mess on the floor, her books still in a pile by her bed, Nate’s rumpled covers that Clint hadn’t gotten a chance to wash piled high near his pillow. He walks into the master bedroom and immediately sheds all his clothes, save for his boxers. Clint crawls into bed next to where Natasha is lying, trying to get comfortable; it’s not exactly a strange feeling to have only two of them in bed together and normally Clint likes it, because it means that they have room to cuddle without being on top of each other. But tonight, wounds and thoughts still fresh from Thanos, being here without Laura feels lonely, and somehow, wrong.

“It’s just like she’s away,” Natasha says as she turns over, putting her head against his arm. Clint swallows hard.

“No,” he says, turning to face her. “It’s not. It’s...you weren’t here, Natasha.”

“I know I wasn’t here,” Natasha says. “I told you, it’s not something I’m happy about. I wish I could’ve been here more, especially in the past few months. I wish I hadn’t gone away.”

“No,” Clint says, sitting up in bed because he feels like he can’t lie down without twitching all over the place. He shoves his spine against the hard bed frame. “It’s not that you weren’t _here,_ because you weren’t. But I was. For once in my life, I _finally_ was, Nat. I wasn’t an Avenger. I wasn’t running off to help anyone. I was here, for everything. I was here, and she was here, and we were here.” He pauses, staring at the fireplace across from him and tries let his mind remember the argument of convincing Laura to put it in so many years ago. ( _The house won’t go up in flames, Laur. You’ve watched too many movies_.) “I got it. I got why Laura was so upset when I went away, when you went away. When you’re here all the time and you’re used to it, and then one day, you’re just not…”

“You’re just not,” Natasha echoes as he trails off.

Clint swallows. “I can’t wrap my head around that yet. So please, just...fucking forgive me if I can’t come home and just pretend that everything is fine, like Laura’s just away, because right now, all I can think about is that I lost my wife.”

“Our wife,” Natasha says so softly that Clint almost misses it. He turns to meet her eyes and finds her staring up at him, one small tear leaking down the side of her face. It reminds him of the fact that he rarely ever sees Natasha in such a vulnerable state, except when she’s at the farm.

“You said you would figure something out,” she says softly. “And you will. I know you will. You’ll do whatever you need to do to get them back, and I’ll help you. We’ll get them back, Clint. I don’t know how, but we will. I promise.”

Clint looks around the room, the hollow feeling in his stomach growing, and tries to believe her own words. “At least you’re here, right?”

Natasha nods against him, and snuggles against his arm a little more.

“Yes, Clint. I’m here.”


	7. Chapter 7

**2017**

 

The days without Natasha are long and, as much as Laura doesn’t want to admit it, lonely. While she knows Natasha’s habit of being in and out of the house over the years has been a staple of her presence since she first showed up at the farm so many years ago, this time, Laura feels like things are different. And it bothers her.

“Look, I don’t like it either,” Clint says over a sightly cold breakfast of scrambled eggs, after he’s successfully sent Cooper and Lila off to school. “And I hate that she’s out there doing these dangerous missions all the time, but at least she comes home, right?”

“It’s a small comfort,” Laura snaps a little more bitterly than she means to. Clint raises an eyebrow as he puts a small amount of food on Nathaniel’s high chair tray and Laura takes a deep breath, trying to compose herself.

“I think I’ll take Nate to the farmer’s market today,” she says after a long pause. “I could use the break.”

“You sure you don’t want me to watch him?” Clint asks as he takes another bite of his eggs. “I mean, unless you really don’t want to be alone.”

“You sure you can handle a dog _and_ a baby?” Laura asks jokingly.

Clint glares. “Watch your mouth, Laura Nicole.”

The banter at least puts Laura in a better mood as she cleans up the kitchen, getting dressed and making a short list of things she wants to buy during her errands. By the time she’s headed out with Nathaniel strapped into his car seat in the back of the minivan, Clint’s already busying himself in the backyard, letting Lucky run around while taking care of the overgrown grass and small vegetable garden.

As much as Laura thinks about Natasha, as much as she wishes Natasha was with them rather than running around with Steve and Sam, she knows Natasha can’t check in the way she used to when she was on assignments with Clint. Which means she certainly doesn’t expect to get a phone call from a blocked number just as she’s pulling into the parking lot next to the farmer’s market.

“What’s up?” Laura asks with a small smile as she reaches for her phone, turning the car off and disabling the bluetooth.

“Oh, you know. It’s 2am somewhere, and I couldn’t sleep until I heard your voice.”

Laura looks down at her lap, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Unfortunately, I don’t have any capabilities to teleport myself overseas yet,” she says. “But there’s an open house invitation for this Saturday if you miss cuddling.”

“Hmmm. Fortunately, I do and I can be there,” Natasha answers, her voice light. There’s nothing in her tone that makes Laura suspicious, but she’s been doing this long enough now that she has a strong feeling Natasha’s not being able to sleep is less due to her actually being tired and more due to her feeling off kilter for one reason or another.

“Hey, want to say hi to Nate?” Laura asks brightly as she switches on speakerphone. At the mention of Natasha’s name, Nathaniel squeals, stubby arms reaching from the backseat towards the cell phone. Laura smiles while listening to Natasha engage in a one-way conversation based on Nathaniel’s grunts and every so often, words and sounds that almost pass for actual sentences.

She rests her hands on the steering wheel and closes her eyes. She should call her mom today. And bake Lila’s cupcakes for her dance class. And pick up Cooper’s uniform, newly dry cleaned and finally free of copious stains and mud. And maybe, finally, get the manicure she’d been putting off for the past week. She opens her eyes and focuses on the people milling around the farmer’s market, stifling a laugh. Despite the school meetings, the nighttime rituals, and the family dinners, it was instances like these where she felt the most normal, where anyone else might believe _she_ was normal -- a mother sitting in her car on a weekday morning with a one and a half year old, taking a call from one of her friends. And while it’s taken awhile for Laura to feel like she _deserves_ this normal, especially with everything that’s gone on in the past few years and especially with Natasha’s relationship in the mix, Clint’s retirement had at least helped her feel less like she was living two different lives.

How’s Clint?”

Natasha’s voice pulls her out of her thoughts. “Still retired.” She moves the phone back towards her and takes the speaker off. “Why, do you have bets going over there?”

“Maybe,” Natasha replies. “But even if I know I’m right, it’s always worth checking.”

Laura grins and pushes hair behind her ear. “So were you really calling just because you missed me?”

“Yes,” Natasha says, her voice dropping. She sighs quietly into the phone. “I...actually wondered if you’d be okay with a slightly earlier visit.”

“You mean before the weekend?” Laura asks, watching as a mother scolds a child who is trying to run into the parking lot.

“Yes,” Natasha repeats. “Like tomorrow. I can meet you at a hotel near the farm.”

Laura blinks in surprise, furrowing her brow at the windshield. “Of course. Just let me know when. If you want Clint there, too, I can get my mom to come over and watch the kids.”

“Both of you,” Natasha confirms. “I’ve gotta go, but I love you.”

“I love you too.” Laura waits until Natasha has hung up and then turns around, fixing Nate with a stare and smiling when he smiles back, the motion accentuating his chubby cheeks.

“Na!”

“Yes, Natasha loves you too,” Laura says, opening the car door and getting out. “Now let’s have some mommy-Nate time.”

She takes out the stroller from the trunk and then removes Nate from his car seat, strapping him into the stroller securely. As she walks towards the farmer’s market, a woman from Cooper’s soccer team crosses her path and waves, smiling brightly.

Laura smiles back, instructing Nate to wave as she crosses the small intersection that passes as a bike lane.

 _See?_ She thinks as she approaches her friend. _We’re normal. Everything around here is just normal._

 

***

 

“So she just said she wanted to come see us earlier than she planned,” Clint says the next night as they drive away from the farm together.

Laura nods. “Yes.”

“And she didn’t say why. Or seem like she was on edge.”

“No, she didn’t say why, this is Natasha we’re talking about,” Laura responds. “And no, it didn’t seem like she was on edge. I know how to read her, too. I’m not incompetent in this relationship.”

Clint seems to understand how his words have sounded, and he sighs at the wheel. “Sorry. I guess maybe I’m the one on edge. It just seems a little odd she would suddenly need to get away and want some alone time when we have it planned for literally every week. I know it’s not an ideal situation, but at least it’s one she's kept up. And I know she misses us, but --”

“Maybe it’s just that,” Laura says, interrupting him. “Someone missing the people she loves and wanting to do something about it.”

Clint glances over at her. “Maybe,” he hedges. Laura puts her hand on his palm, letting her fingers rest there.

“I know what you’re thinking of,” she says quietly. When Clint doesn’t answer, she presses on. “The last time she called us away to meet with us alone like this. When Ross brought out the Accords.”

Clint still doesn’t say anything, but his face tells Laura all she needs to know. She shifts her fingers, squeezing his palm, a simple gesture of _I love you_ and _I’m here_ and I _know it’s going to be okay._

“Ever wonder when our lives got so complicated?”

“Every day,” Clint says with a wry grin. “I somehow ended up with two wives and three children.”

Laura rolls her eyes and considers it a success that she was able to break the mood, even if it might not last long. But Clint seems to be in better spirits for the rest of the drive, and by the time they’ve pulled up in front of a Hampton Inn off the highway, he looks a little less jumpy. Laura has a feeling that if Natasha’s mood is any indication, he’ll be feeling a _lot_ more relaxed in a couple of hours.

Since Laura is already in possession of a room number, it’s easy to bypass the front desk and pretend they’re paying guests. Natasha answers the door after three quick knocks, revealing herself in a black tank top, spandex yoga shorts -- and, Laura notices with a startled realization, platinum blonde hair that’s been sheared to her chin.

“What the fuck!” Clint yelps as soon as Natasha closes the door behind them. Laura immediately punches him in the bicep.

“Clint!”

“What, there are no kids here,” Clint says, still staring at Natasha.

“There are _other_ people here,” Laura reminds him firmly, gesturing to the walls. She turns around and hugs Natasha, wrapping her arms around her tightly and kissing her earlobe.

“Now it’s my turn,” she says as she pulls away. “What the fuck?”

Natasha sighs loudly. “You both hate it, then?”

Laura shakes her head and sits down on the bed. “I don’t hate it,” she says after a pause, because she doesn’t. She doesn’t think she could ever hate anything Natasha did to change herself, even if she cut off all her hair -- the hair that Laura has always loved because it was the first thing that made her realize she liked her husband’s partner in _that_ way. “It’s just...not what I expected.”

“Yeah, you’ve changed your style before but you’ve never changed your hair _color_ in the entire time I’ve known you,” Clint butts in. “Why now?”

“Well, I’m not exactly inside the law, for one,” Natasha answers, joining Laura on the bed. “So there’s that. But there’s...something else.” She pauses, looking first at Clint, then Laura. “I know I’ve gone away before. I know it’s not that different, and we’re trying to make it seem like it’s not a big deal. But to me...it is different.”

“What do you mean?” Clint asks with a frown.

Natasha stands up, taking small steps around the room. “I mean, it’s _different_ , Clint. The things I’m doing, the person I am when I’m on the road...it’s different than the stuff I did with you. And a few years ago, that was fine, and I was okay with that. But now I _want_ to be a different person in the field. I _want_ to be a different person when I come home to you guys.”

“So you changed your hair color because it makes you feel different,” Clint observes, raising an eyebrow.

“And because I wanted to stay off the radar,” Natasha adds.

“Right.” Clint pauses, and Laura can tell he’s not buying the explanation even if it’s all true. “So does it? Make you feel different?”

Natasha shrugs. “I haven’t had a chance to find out,” she says slowly. “I just did it a few days ago. I wanted -- I wanted you to see it first. I wanted to explain it before I walked into the house.”

“Yeah, that’s smart,” Clint mutters as Laura shoots him a look. “What? I guarantee Cooper and Lila are going to say something. Imagine if their _parents_ are just as surprised.”

“It’s not that bad,” Laura ventures, fingering the blonde strands. They still feel the same, which she knows is silly, because hair dye doesn’t change anything except the color. Natasha smiles tentatively.

“As long as I have your approval, that’s all that matters.”

“Natasha, you could have _no_ hair and I’d still love you,” Laura promises, putting her hand on her cheek. “You know that.” She leans over and kisses her, letting her body relax.

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” Natasha says when Laura finally stops kissing her. She turns to look at Clint. “I just needed to see you, and I didn’t want to wait until the weekend.”

“Yeah,” Clint says gruffly, but there’s a gentle understanding to his voice that Laura knows Natasha has to hear, especially if _she_ can pick up on it. “I know. Do you want to eat something? We could order in.”

“We _could_ ,” Natasha says, a small smile playing over her lips. “But I’m much more interested in doing things that we usually don’t get to do until the kids are in bed...if you get my drift.”

“You know, Clint almost forgot to put on boxers before we left,” Laura mentions with a wink.

“That wasn’t intentional!” Clint protests, but the rest of his sentence is cut off when Natasha’s mouth meets his. Laura watches them fall back onto the bed, the beginnings of light foreplay initiated.

She only lets herself wait for a few seconds before she joins in.

 

**2018**

 

Natasha sleeps late and long, not realizing she’s needed this -- a warm bed, a comfortable house, and a comforting presence next to her. She blinks her eyes open slowly, taking in the room at the farm -- the clothes piled high in the corner on a chair, sunlight streaming through the half-open faded curtains and warming the covers stretched over her body, scratch marks from Lucky’s paws dotting the floor. Natasha turns over and meets Clint’s face; he’s still sleeping or at least he appears to be, and she takes a moment to brush a stray piece of hair from his forehead.

Clint shifts as she touches him and Natasha watches him come awake. She sees the realization in his eyes when he remembers where he is and why he’s here, and as his eyebrows crease together, she leans over and kisses him, morning breath and all. Natasha wraps one hand around his broad shoulders, pulling him close, and when they pull apart she can’t help but laugh.

Clint gives her a look. “What?” he asks tiredly.

Natasha shakes her head against the pillow. “I don’t know. I just feel like years ago, we would’ve been so worried about having alone time...or worried about being caught by someone. Or we wanted to find time alone. Now we have that alone time, and it’s just...strange.”

Clint nods and sits up in bed, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Natasha’s about to ask if he wants coffee, but he’s already up and walking down the stairs. She lies in bed for a few more moments and then gets up slowly, grabbing Laura’s robe from the back of the door. It still smells like her -- a soft buttery fragrance, lightly toasted with an infusion of lavender from the body wash she puts on every morning without fail. Clint’s finished making a full pot of coffee when she gets downstairs, and has a mug waiting for her on the table. Natasha sits down and cups the mug gently, noticing he’s given her one of Laura’s favorites -- a depiction of a sleepy cocker spaniel snoozing on an oversized coffee bag. She thumbs the dog’s face, worn and faded from too many times through the dishwasher, and smiles sadly.

“Do you think Laura’s parents are okay?”

Clint looks up from where he’s been staring into his own coffee, seemingly lost in thought. From the way his eyes focus, she can tell he hadn’t even realized she was there. “Who the fuck knows? This thing is so...so _random_. Half the population is gone. You either notice or you don’t.”

Natasha leaves her mug on the table, walking over and threading her fingers through his hair. “It feels so strange without anyone here,” Natasha murmurs as the silence presses in around them. She hadn’t quite noticed it until now, but the kitchen seems big and lonely without the presence of loud footsteps or even loud barking. It’s too quiet, the lived in space that always, without fail, felt warm and welcoming instead feeling like a cold shoulder.

“Yeah,” Clint says, finally picking up his coffee. “I know.”

Natasha moves her hands from his hair to his shoulders, massaging gently. “We should go get Nate and Lucky while we’re up. I’ll feel better when they’re back home with us, and I think you will, too.” She pauses to let him digest the words, to give him a chance to push back if he wants to. “Do you want me to go?”

“No,” Clint says heavily. “It’ll just be more questions. Why you, why isn’t Laura there, where are the kids...I really don’t want to talk about this with people.”

“Maybe she’s heard,” Natasha offers tentatively. “There’s gotta be news reports that we’re not seeing. I know we were secluded in Wakanda, but half the world doesn’t just disappear without someone taking notice.”

“Hannah and Dave were fine,” Clint responds firmly. “Even their damn dog was fine. And if they don’t suspect anything about us, I don’t want them to start. Let me just go get it over with, okay?”

Natasha clenches her teeth, willing herself not to lash out against the mood she knows so well -- the mood she would normally berate him for, because it was Clint at his worst, being stubborn and angry and upset and not responding to things rationally -- knowing that he has a reason act this way.

 _But I do too_ , she finds herself thinking as Clint walks away, heading up the stairs to presumably get dressed. She clenches her fingers around her mug. _I’m angry, too. I miss them, too. Why don’t I get to lose it and why don’t my feelings get a say in this? Why do I have to push my emotions back to deal with yours?_

She tries to shove the negative thoughts out of her mind as she starts rearranging things in the kitchen and by the time Clint comes back downstairs, she’s pretty much reorganized the all silverware drawers plus half of the shelves holding mugs.

“Be back,” Clint says with a wave before walking out the door. Natasha lets him go, continuing to clean until she starts feeling frustrated. She throws the sponge she’s using to wipe down the counter at the wall, not feeling entirely satisfied with the pitiful smacking sound it makes when it connects. She wishes she had a gun or a weapon and realizes she does, but that it won’t do her any good -- she could shoot a few rounds before Clint got back without telling him, but without a silencer for the gun, she ran the risk of attracting attention. Clint had better hearing than usual now thanks to his aids, and Hannah’s house wasn’t all that far away.

In any other situation, she knows she’d enjoy being alone at the farm. She’d love the feeling of being _home_ , of having time to herself without loud noises or children clinging to her legs. She’d open up a bottle of something good, because she knows where Laura keeps the good stuff, and grab a book or a movie and sprawl out on the couch with no questions asked.

But now, everything feels different. She doesn’t have to wonder if Clint feels it too, she knows he does and that’s why he’s been moody and irritable and decidedly more selfish with his emotions since returning to the farm. Natasha finds herself moving to the liquor cabinet anyway, opening it to reveal a bottle of Johnnie Walker Gold. She smiles as she takes it out, inspecting the already broken seal.

“Drinking the good stuff while I’m away, Laura?” she murmurs into the air as she pours herself a glass. She does end up on the couch eventually, sitting down and stretching out her legs, trying not to check the living room wall’s decorated clock too much. When she hears the door finally open again, she’s halfway through her drink, her mind somewhere between hazy and lost.

Lucky runs inside first, making a quick circle around the living room, as if he needs to make sure everything is exactly as he’s left it. Satisfied, he bounds over to Natasha and licks her leg. Natasha can’t help but smile as she leans over, putting her glass on the table and rubbing his ears.

“Hey Lucky….hey boy, good boy. You miss me?”

Lucky barks once and then nuzzles Natasha’s thigh, jumping onto the couch and settling there in contentment. In another second, Nate is toddling forward with a big grin, latching himself onto Natasha’s leg and staring up at her with a huge grin.

“Tasha!”

“Hey...hey, little buddy.” Natasha scoops him up and places him on her lap, hugging him tight. She meets Clint’s eyes.

“How did it go with Hannah?”

Clint shrugs. “Fine. There were questions but I told her I went away on business and said that Laura was busy with stuff for school.”

Natasha blinks in surprise. “You lied?”

“What was I _supposed_ to say?” Clint asks sarcastically. “Sorry, Laura’s actually not here at all, she disappeared in a cloud of dust thanks to some cosmic fuck-up along with my other kids, and I just came back from a futuristic country that couldn’t help me?”

Natasha doesn’t answer him, because she knows she knows any response will only ignite another round of arguments. She focuses on Nathaniel instead, realizing how long it’s been since she’s seen him. He’s bigger than he was when she last left, not by a huge amount but it’s enough to make her realize how quickly he’s grown even in the short window that she’d let time slide between being off the grid and coming home. He’s also heavier; even though he doesn’t seem like he’s put on any weight judging by his size, he’s putting pressure on Natasha’s arms in a noticeable way.

“You used to come every week,” Clint says quietly, breaking into her thoughts. “Then it was every two weeks. You missed a lot.”

“I wanted to come back more,” Natasha says just as quietly. “It just got hard. We got comfortable, and I got busy. I regret that I got busy.”

“Well, no one could have warned you that Laura was going to disappear,” Clint says, walking past her. Lucky’s ears perk up and he follows Clint into the kitchen while Natasha sighs, putting Nate on the couch and getting up.

“I assume we have dog food still and that didn’t magic itself away too,” Natasha says half jokingly as she watches Clint walk to the pantry. He emerges with a half-filled bag, which he pours into a blue dish.

“Fortunately for us and the rest of the world, the dog won’t starve,” Clint answers as he watches Lucky attack his food. “I’m gonna go shower.”

He’s gone before Natasha can say anything else and she’s left standing in the kitchen, swallowing down a scream.

 

***

 

Clint knows he’s being difficult, and he gives himself a little bit of credit because at least he’s acknowledging it. He’d been trying to keep himself from acting out, but the truth was, being home was harder than he’d expected. Clint knows he’s the one who had made the choice to return, but it didn’t mean he was prepared for how he would act or feel.

He knew he couldn’t do anything in Wakanda. But he also knows he can’t do anything here, and that bothers him. He thought he could do something here, because maybe he could pretend that things were a little more normal. He could be himself with Natasha and be open about his feelings, and be with his son and his dog -- and hell, that counted for something. But now that he _is_ here, all he feels is helpless and alone.

And guilty.

He feels guilty showering and drinking coffee and cleaning, doing mundane things that make him feel like he’s moving on with his life as if nothing is wrong. He feels guilty kissing Natasha; it feels like he’s being unfaithful to Laura even though there’s a part of his brain that knows that’s not the case at all. Clint stands in the shower, letting the hot water run down his body, feeling the grime and sweat and ache of the past few days fall off of his skin. When he steps out and towels off, he only feels marginally better, but manages to shake off his uneasiness before he exits the bathroom. Immediately, his ears are assaulted by a shrill noise, one that he recognizes even before he opens the door all the way.

Clint walks down the stairs, hair still wet, thin shirt matted to his back in the places where the water still hasn’t quite dried. He finds Natasha pacing the room, holding Nathaniel, who is red in the face and screaming. Lucky, for his part, is curled up on the couch, decidedly ignoring the commotion. 

“I’m trying to get him to stop crying,” Natasha says as she continues to bounce him. “He just won’t stop.”

“Let me try,” Clint says, holding out his arms. Natasha acquises, handing Nate over as he writhes in her arms.

“I tried everything,” Natasha says as Clint takes his son. “Singing, walking, reading, going outside...he just won’t stop.”

“He needs his mom,” Clint says without thinking about it, because he recognizes this discomfort to a degree that almost hurts.

“I’m his mom,” Natasha responds automatically and Clint whirls around, suddenly annoyed.

“I know, Natasha. But he needs _Laura_!”

The moment the words leave his mouth, he regrets saying them. He watches Natasha’s face, the way her posture straightens, the way her fists open and close at her side.

“You need to stop, Clint.” The tone of her voice is dangerous, but he can’t help himself from biting back with the obvious question.

“Stop what?”

“This!” Natasha snaps over Nathaniel’s loud cries. “This attitude, this depression! You need to stop shutting me out and actually _talk_ about shit, because I’m not playing this stupid game! I know that this is hard, I know it sucks and you miss Laura and Cooper and Lila, but you aren’t the only person in this house who lost something! And just because I went away for awhile and wasn’t here for what happened, it doesn’t mean I’m not a part of this family!”

Clint doesn’t even bother to notice that she’s sworn in front of Nathaniel, even though he figures he probably can’t hear anything anyway over his screaming. He puts a hand on his head, murmuring softly, trying to quiet him. When he looks up again, Natasha’s nowhere to be found, but Clint can hear her stomping up the stairs with the help of his aids. He exhales in frustration and continues to walk around the room, trying to remember what Laura would say or do when Nathaniel got in screaming moods like this.

 _At least talk or something_ , Clint finds himself thinking in annoyance as he walks into the kitchen and tries to find something to eat. _I know you can use words now_. _Do you have to scream like a freaking maniac?_ Coming up with nothing decent in the fridge, he attempts to offer a pacifier instead, but Nathaniel spits it out immediately, sending it careening across the floor.

Clint sits down in the kitchen chair, tired and angry and hurting, and starts cuddling Nate in his arms. As a last resort, he starts singing softly, cycling through old Billy Joel songs until his throat starts to hurt. As he finishes a refrain of _The Longest Time,_ he notices Nathaniel is finally starting to quiet, his screams tapering off and his small gasping wails becoming less frequent. Clint lets out a weary breath and closes his eyes, continuing to rock his son back and forth. When he opens them, he sees Natasha standing in front of him, leaning against the wooden archway.

“I’m sorry.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow and moves to a chair, joining him at the table. “It’s not just about being sorry,” she says levelly. “It’s about knowing _why_ you’re supposed to be sorry.”

Clint looks down at Nathaniel, who is now resting his body against his dad’s chest while staring silently at the ceiling.

“I'm sorry because I know I’ve been difficult.”

Natasha snorts. “That’s a nice way of putting it.”

“I know how I've acted,” Clint continues, ignoring her retort. “I’ve been treating you like shit, and I’ve been selfish.”

“You’ve been beating yourself up,” Natasha says more gently than he thinks he probably deserves. “You feel like this is all your fault and you feel like you’re a failure for not being able to do anything to get everyone back.”

“I feel _guilty_ ,” he corrects, looking up at her wearily. “I feel guilty that I’m trying to have some sort of a normal life when she’s not here. Even when we’re in bed together…when you’re kissing me and trying to make me feel better...it just makes me feel like crap. Trying to do anything to move on seems wrong.” 

Natasha reaches over and takes his hand. “But we’re not moving on. We’re just trying to work with what we have. You still have a family, Clint, and they need you. You can’t abandon them just because you lost half of them...and you can’t abandon _me_.” She swallows, and it sounds like she’s trying to hold back her emotions. “I didn’t disappear. I need you as much as you need her. I miss her too, and I’m angry, and I need to know I get a say in this grief that you’re making all about yourself.”

“I get it. I do, Nat. But I don’t know how to deal with this,” Clint says morosely. “We’ve dealt with loss before. But this is my worst nightmare. Laura not being here...my children not being here...I always thought, you know, with our jobs and what we did, what if I outlived them --”

“Just because we haven’t dealt with this doesn’t mean that we _can’t_ ,” Natasha cuts in. “And trying to survive doesn’t mean forgetting or moving on. We can find a way to get through this. You can have bad days and you can be upset and you can even yell at me. But you have to _work_ with me, because if we can’t figure out how to navigate this together, then we’re going to fail everyone who loves us no matter what we do.”

Nathaniel looks up at Clint, as if realizing he’s there for the first time. “Dada,” he says slowly but placidly, reaching up to grab Clint’s nose. Clint leans down and kisses him, feeling some semblance of calm run through his bones.

“I think I want to make some lunch,” he says after a moment. “Do you want to take Nate? I know it’s been awhile.”

Natasha gives him a tiny smile and opens her arms as Clint passes Nathaniel to her. He looks up at her face, giggles, and blurts out “Tasha!” in a voice that heartbreakingly reminds Clint of how Lila would say Natasha’s name when she was learning how to speak.

“Let’s make lunch,” she agrees while Lucky barks at the sight of Clint getting up. Nate puts his head against Natasha’s chest, sticking his thumb in his mouth, and Clint suddenly feels a little less lonely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I need to apologize AGAIN for making you wait for updates...they are coming regularly, I swear! And while I want to promise I'm going to be able to get the next chapter up more quickly, I'm doing this little thing called getting married in the next few weeks, so my writing time might be a little limited. But I AM actively working on finishing this and have some storytelling things coming up that I think you'll enjoy (in a nice AND an evil way.)
> 
> Thank you as always for your comments, kudos, reblogs, and interest in this fic and this series and this family! Your support means so much to me and you have no idea how much I appreciate it. <3 <3 <3


	8. Chapter 8

**2017**

 

It’s just past six in the morning when Laura wakes with a start, realizing she’s screwed.

“Oh crap,” she mutters out loud to a dark room, causing Clint to stir next to her.

“Wha?”

Laura’s head snaps around. “Jesus, why are you awake?”

Clint grunts and turns over, messily gesturing to his ears. Laura sighs, knowing that sometimes if they fall asleep by accident, he’ll forget to take out his hearing aids for the night. She sits up in bed and pulls the covers back.

“Wha’you doin’,” Clint mumbles as he pulls the covers up. “No ba’cryin.”

“Go to sleep,” Laura responds quietly but sharply, watching as he turns over without question. She gets up and steps easily over Lucky, who is dozing outside of their closed bedroom door. Laura tries and fails to remember when the dog started sleeping closer and closer to her children; when Clint first brought the dog home, he would find his on Clint and Laura’s bed until he started camping out between Cooper and Lila’s room. (Laura suspects that in addition to feeling protective, having three people in the bed for at least one night a week wasn’t something he enjoyed, even if he’d very much learned how to make sure he had a spot no matter how much space they were all taking up.)

She checks on a sleeping Nate before heading downstairs. Yawning in the silence of the kitchen, she rummages in the pantry for some instant coffee and runs the hot water tab on the faucet, properly fueling herself before she starts pulling out pans and recipes.

Laura knows she can’t beat herself up for forgetting about Lila’s bake sale. The past few weeks had been more hectic than usual, with Cooper’s soccer games kicking into high gear and Nate’s “terrible two” tantrums doing the same. Clint had been doing as much as he could to take the extra loads of stress off her hands, including taking the kids to school and making lunches and giving baths, but Laura can’t deny that she’s slipped more than usual in the “amazing and competent mom” department.

She takes another sip of coffee and sits down at the kitchen table with freshly washed hands, opening the carton of cold cookie dough and pulling apart chunks. She carefully molds them into soft mounds and when she has enough, she uses the plastic cut outs she’s pulled from the pantry to build intricate shapes that she then places onto the grease-laden pan next to her.

“Hi mommy.”

Laura turns in surprise to find her daughter standing at the edge of the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. Laura quickly pushes away the dough.

“Lila, baby, what’s wrong?”

“I just wanted up,” Lila says, walking towards her. Laura allows her to pull out the chair and as she climbs on, she notices the pile of dough.

“What are you making?”

“Cookies,” Laura replies, figuring that because it _is_ cookies, her daughter won’t push too much about the specifics of why she’s making them before the sun has officially risen. “For your school. Want to help?”

Lila grins and Laura gently pushes her off of the chair.

“Wash your hands first, little lady.”

She picks Lila up and carries her to the sink so that she can wash her hands properly and then brings her back to the table. Lila looks down at the dough.

“Remember when Wanda was here and we made cookies too!”

“We did,” Laura says, surprised but not that she remembers a specific event that happened over a year ago. “You liked baking with Wanda.”

“Mommy?”

“Hmmm?” Laura glances up and meets her daughter’s eyes.

“I’m named for grammy Lila, right?”

Laura smiles, taking another cookie cutter from the pile. “That’s right.”

“What was she like?”

“Oh.” Laura pauses for a moment to think. “Well, she was very smart. And she loved reading, like you. You remind me of her, when you smile.”

“Really?”

Laura laughs. “Really,” she replies, breaking off a large piece of dough and handing it to Lila. Laura figures she can either use it, play with it, or eat itt; at this point in her life she’s past worrying about the health risks of raw eggs.

“Mommy?”

“Hmmm?”

“Where’s grammy Lila now that she’s not here anymore?”

Laura pauses again, this time feeling her forehead wrinkle, a sight which she knows doesn’t escape her daughter. She realizes she has no idea how to respond and wants to laugh, even though it’s the absolute wrong reaction. For all of Clint and Natasha’s dangers, for all the times she thought she would have to explain how something terrible had happened beyond injuries or “long sleeps,” she’d never actually figured out how to explain death to her children. Cooper was old enough now to understand a decent amount of real world heaviness, if he wanted to, though he’d never really asked -- and thankfully, he’d never had never had a reason to. But Lila, despite having been exposed to things like Natasha and Clint kissing long before she understood what might be going on with her parents, had never asked what Laura considered the “big questions” before.

“Well.” Laura swallows and tries to think about the most honest way to answer. “She’s still here. She’s just not in a place where you can see her.”

“Is she here when I go to sleep?” Lila asks expectantly.

“Sometimes,” Laura says. “She’s here when you play outside and when we eat dinner and when you do something really, really special in school.”

“So…” Lila looks down at the table. “So even if you can’t see them, they’re still there?”

“Yes,” Laura answers, glancing up and seeing Clint appear in the archway to the kitchen. Laura catches his eye for a split second before she looks down again.

“Do you have any other questions about grammy Lila?” Laura asks after another moment of silence. Lila pulls at her hair and shakes her head.

“I wanna watch princesses.”

Laura sighs as she lets her eyes travel over dough that still needs to be cut and placed on the sheet. “Go ahead,” she relents, knowing that as much as she’d like the help, she’ll work ten times faster without stopping every five minutes. As Lila runs out of the room, Clint gives her an eyebrow raise.

“Score one for parenting,” he comments, her voice more gravelly than usual. Laura shakes her head.

“I don’t feel I scored very well on that one at all, honestly. But thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I try.” Clint takes a sip of coffee from Laura’s cup and then makes a face. “Ugh, how long has this been sitting here?”

“Since before you got up,” Laura replies with a smirk. “I was nice and let you sleep, remember?”

“Yeah, and then the dog woke me the hell up,” Clint grumbles, forcing down another sip of coffee. “What the heck was that about with Lila?”

“Beats me,” Laura replies honestly. “Caught me off guard, though.”

“You handled it fine,” Clint assures her, leaning over to kiss her on the head.

Laura leans back in her chair, staring at the mess in front of her.

“I keep thinking that we’re going to be normal,” she says, looking up with a sad smile. “But then something like this happens, and all I can think is --”

“What?” Clint interrupts. “I mean, sure, it’s strange that Lila asked about where her dead grandmother was with no prompting, but it’s not like it’s a question that’s out of the ordinary.”

Laura glares at him. “You’re such an asshole,” she mutters under her breath. “It’s not that. It’s that every time she asks something like that, my mind just thinks...all I can think about is you.” She swallows hard. “All I can think about are the times when I thought I’d have to tell her that her dad is dead, or her dad is hurt, or…”

“But you never had to,” Clint reminds her, putting a hand on her leg. “And I’m not doing that kind of stuff anymore, so you don’t have to worry anymore.”

“It doesn’t _matter_ ,” Laura says, letting her eyes trail to where her daughter is happily watching television, bouncing along with the sing-a-long on the screen. “I think...that fear will always be there, Clint. Those _memories_ will always be there. And now knowing Natasha is still doing stuff --”

“Hey.” Clint squeezes her hand. “Laura, come on. How long have we been doing this?”

Laura looks down at the table and suddenly realizes how silly she’s letting herself be with her vulnerabilities.

“A long time.”

“A hell of a long time,” Clint agrees. “And I’m not saying it’s never going to get easier. But we’re not exactly new at this, right?”

Laura nods, and Clint squeezes her leg.

“Can you talk to your mom?”

“My mom?” Laura asks in confusion. Clint shrugs.

“Yeah, well. Your dad went away a lot when you were a kid, right? I’m sure she worried too.”

Laura sighs. “The stuff my dad did, even when he was in more active duty, was nowhere near the kind of things I’ve experienced with you being in SHIELD. Or out of SHIELD,” she adds pointedly. “I’m sure she worried, but she never had to deal with almost losing someone because they died on a _flying city_.”

“Fair point,” Clint agrees. “But my comment still stands -- I’m here now. I’m not leaving. So you don’t have to worry about something happening to me, unless it’s me falling off the roof or something.”

“That’s not funny,” Laura says, before pausing. “At least no one ever has to worry about me leaving for some spy life.”

“Laura Barton, the SHIELD agent?” Clint raises an eyebrow. “Would’ve been hot.”

“Yeah, and the house would’ve fallen apart,” Laura adds.

Clint laughs, running a hand down his face. “That’s true. Can you imagine Natasha trying to parent by herself and run a house?”

“I think she’d do pretty well,” Laura says with a small smile. “But I appreciate that you think so highly of my skills.” She looks towards the living room, where Lila is laughing at the television, and picks up on a softer second laugh. Laura turns to Clint with a confused look.

“Yeah,” Clint says. “He got up with me to take Lucky outside and then went to watch her show with her. I don’t even think he _cares_ about princesses.”

“He definitely doesn’t,” Laura confirms, unable to help her smile. “You know, we made some pretty great kids.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, wrapping his arm around her. “We kinda did.”

 

***

 

“Shit!”

He whispers the words, but they sound loud in the empty space of the kitchen as the mug Clint is holding shatters when he steps back and bumps into the kitchen counter. Hot coffee splashes all over his hands and bare legs, stinging his skin, and he clenches his teeth together.

“Fuck!”

He says the second swear more quietly, shaking out his hands in an attempt to stop them from stinging, and swiftly puts the cup down on the counter. Grabbing for a rag, he attempts to wipe the excess coffee from his skin while trying not to mourn what he’s lost. It’s all re-heated anyway, probably not as good as it was hours ago, but still. It was coffee.

“Clint?”

Clint glances up to find Natasha making her way towards him, her large overnight bag hanging off her shoulder.

“Oh, good,” he mutters, sagging against the counter. “Home just in time to see me to make a fool out of myself.”

“Well, at least I’m on target.” Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Can I help?”

He shrugs, as Natasha puts down her bag and grabs a dish towel, helping Clint wipe up the excess spill. She takes her time as she wipes down his legs, moving her hands gently up his torso. He glances down and she smirks knowingly as she rises.

“Just making sure you didn’t hurt yourself anywhere else,” she says conversationally, her voice huskier than usual. “You _are_ prone to clumsiness.”

“Is that all?”

Natasha grins and kisses him, letting her hands wrap around his neck. “God, I missed you. Steve just isn’t cutting it. His body’s all wrong.”

Clint’s body freezes and his head snaps downward. When he sees Natasha trying not to laugh, he groans.

“Not fair.”

“So fair,” Natasha declares, moving away from him. “You are definitely out of it and it’s too much fun.” Clint watches her walk out of the kitchen and up the stairs, before turning to clean up more of the kitchen. As he puts another unwashed mug in the sink, he spies more movement out of the corner of his eye.

“Hey.” Clint puts down his half-filled mug and walks over to Cooper, who is lingering a few steps away. “Did I wake you?”

Cooper shrugs, moving into the light. “Couldn’t sleep,” he admits, glancing around the kitchen and landing on the morning paper that’s still haphazardly littering the table. “And then I heard Nat come in and heard you talking." He stops, as if he's not sure if he should continue. "I saw that thing on the news today. You know, the Spider kid.”

“And?” Clint asks, mentally congratulating himself for not freaking out with his response. He knows part of it is because him and Laura had actually taken the initiative to have a long conversation when the news had broken about Peter Parker; it’s something Clint feels sad about because he’s spent so many years avoiding serious real world talk and he knows now he has to worry about things like Cooper finding the world unsafe, or worrying about someone’s father turning into a villainous superhero at school.

“And...I dunno. He’s like, my age, right?”

Clint walks over to the table and picks up the paper. “Yeah, I think so.” He puts it down after looking at it quickly, and examines his son’s face. “Is there anything you wanna talk about?”

Cooper shrugs. “He looks like he did a lot of stuff alone.”

Clint takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I’m sure he had help,” he says finally. “The news just likes to make stuff look worse than it is. No one would let a young kid take on a battle like that on their own. ”

“Yeah, but...there’s no more Avengers.”

This time, Cooper’s words do catch Clint off-guard, and he fights for an answer. “There’s not...technically,” he says slowly. “But there’s still people out there who can help. There are other people in the world besides the Avengers.”

“But _you’re_ not there,” Cooper points out.

Clint rubs his eyes and sighs. “What’s really going on that you’re not telling me, Coop?”

For a long time, Cooper doesn’t respond. He looks down at the paper again, and then up at Clint. “You always go protect people,” he says after a long silence. “You left us to go to Wanda. You would leave all the time with Natasha. Why didn’t you go help him?”

Clint swallows; Cooper’s words aren’t necessarily accusatory but he feels like he’s being shamed all the same. “Things are different now,” he answers; it had been a conscious decision since Clint escaped the Raft that they would keep their children out of the loop when it came to how they could potentially be in danger, aside from telling them to be more careful than usual. “It’s not as easy for me to run off and help people.”

“Why, because of your ears?” Cooper asks pointedly. “Cause I know people with stuff like that who still work.”

“It’s not because of my ears,” Clint says, trying not to start an argument when he knows his son is only trying to work out some uncomfortable feeling that’s clearly eating away at him. “But things have changed. And I’m here now with you, and it doesn’t mean I don’t care about this kid, or any other person who is in trouble. I just have different priorities.”

Cooper bites down on his lip and looks up at his dad. “Do you miss it? Being an Avenger and stuff?”

Clint walks forward and puts his arm around Cooper. “I do,” he admits. “But I like being here with you more.”

“But you _miss it,_ ” Cooper repeats with a tone that screams _Laura_.

“Of course I do,” Clint answers, not wanting to beat around the bush. “It was a part of my life for a really long time...and there’s a lot you don’t even know about it. But that makes it hard to let go.” He tightens his grip around Cooper’s shoulders, pulling him close, then looks down to meet his eyes. “Coop, I need you to understand and believe that I’d never, ever just abandon someone or not help someone because I didn’t care. You know that I’d do whatever I could to protect someone.”

“I know,” Cooper says heavily. “I know, dad.”

Clint kisses the top of his head, feeling like there’s more to the conversation but not wanting to push, especially this close to midnight. “You know that’s why Natasha still goes away? She wants to help people and she wants to make a difference.” He pauses. “You loved Natasha, you know. When you were little. You asked her all the time if you could be like her.”

“She was around a lot but not a lot, so it felt special when it was,” Cooper says. He looks at Clint and scrunches up his face. “Why did it take you so long to talk to me about her?”

Clint hesitates, unsure of how he got from spilling coffee on himself to getting turned on by Natasha coming home to talking to his son about young superheroes and unconventional parenting. “That’s more of a question for your mom.”

Cooper rolls his eyes. “ _Daaaaaad_. Come on, I’m not a baby anymore.”

“Yeah, I know you’re not,” Clint says. “But your mom and I got married and we thought our life would be just us and maybe a kid or two. Then I got my job, and mom got pregnant with you, and I met Natasha...and all of a sudden, things were going in a different direction. We just never wanted it to be weird for you.” He stops to let his worlds settle in. “It took us a long time as adults to figure out what was going on with Natasha. And we wanted you to be a kid, and not worry about all the other stuff.”

“The boring grown-up stuff, right?” Cooper asks skeptically.

Clint laughs. “Yeah,” he agrees. “The boring grown-up stuff. And you know what boring grown-ups do? They don’t go to bed after midnight.”

Cooper sighs, and Clint sees him mentally resign to his dad’s words. “I guess I can _try_ to be tired.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” Clint says, hugging him again. Cooper hugs him back and when he pulls away, he’s smiling.

“Hey dad...I know you miss being an Avenger and stuff, but I really like that we can talk like this.”

Clint smiles, and he knows the comfort he feels isn’t just from being in a warm house on a cold night, knowing the people you love are close by.

“Me too.”

 

**2018**

 

It’s not that Natasha doesn’t believe that parenting is hard. She’s known Clint and Laura since Cooper was a baby -- she’d became acclimated into their family in time to learn the cries that come before sunrise, the coffee that was brewed at all hours of the night, the screams that came from not knowing where a favorite shoe was or the fact that _that_ book wasn’t the one that was supposed to be put in the backpack today. She’s helped parent enough to know that while it’s not easy, it’s also manageable, and as long as she had either Clint or Laura -- the people who were utterly masterful at it -- it wasn’t always a bad gig.

But after three unending tantrums that have occurred in quick succession, absolutely robbing Natasha of any sleep she might have wanted, she’s almost ready to bolt. She suspects Clint isn’t far behind in wanting to get out his bow and shoot, and realizes he actually could because the people who would normally yell at him about it aren’t here. She feels sad when that realization sinks in, so she settles for taking a walk around the farm before she returns to make early coffee. By the time she gets back, Clint’s already up and in the middle of deep cleaning Laura’s workspace.

“I’ve resigned myself to being a zombie for the rest of the day,” he says by way of greeting as he gathers a pile of papers together. Natasha pushes the button on the coffee maker and saying a small prayer of thanks that she’d thought to put the grounds in the night before, while Clint continues to clean. Natasha stands by the sink, waiting and watching for the caffeine to brew, soaking in the blissful silence.

“He’s gonna ask,” Clint says when he speaks again, throwing a large stash of crumpled post-it notes in the trash. Natasha sits down at the table and immediately pulls her legs up on the kitchen chair. Between her stance, the smell of the kitchen’s burned toast, and the open window with the moss-heavy breeze, it almost feels like everything is back to normal.

“About what?”

“This,” Clint says, gesturing around. “He’s gonna ask what happened to his mom. Why she disappeared.”

Natasha frowns, looking over at him and then back down at her coffee. “You think? Two year olds aren’t exactly primed to remember every exact moment of their life, Clint.”

“Cooper remembers when you would come to the house and play with him and leave,” Clint responds. “And Lila remembers you taking care of her as a baby.”

“Those were very vague memories defined by things that were repeated over time,” Natasha points out. “Babies become accustomed to things that they experience over time, or at least, I like to think I’ve learned one thing about parenting from you and Laura. Anyway, I highly doubt Nate will remember this as more than a little break where we’ll eventually tell him his mom was on vacation or something.”

“Which assumes we can count on her coming back,” Clint returns immediately. They both lapse into silence because Natasha knows that there’s nothing she can say that won’t result in them yelling or snapping at each other.

“I’ll try to contact Steve later,” Natasha says finally. “Maybe someone has figured something out. You know no one is sitting around on this.”

“Except us,” Clint answers.

Natasha gives him a strong look. “Don’t feed me that crap, Clint. You _wanted_ to go home. If you don’t think you’re doing enough here, you’re welcome to fly that quinjet back to Wakanda and I’ll stay with Nate.”

Clint gets up, walking to the toaster to take out a burned piece of bread. He glances at it, makes a face, then shoves it in his mouth anyway, leaving darkened crumbs on the floor.

“Mornings are hard,” he says after a moment. “Laura’s always up and making breakfast. I mean, always -- before we were even married, we just had this routine where she was always up and aware and it was...comfortable. Lila would run around the kitchen and demand to help make breakfast on the weekends. And Cooper would talk our ear off about the latest video game or book and Laura would yell at him for not eating. I missed that for so many years. I mean, I didn’t, but I did. And now it’s just been taken away from me again.” He turns around, meeting her eyes, and shrugs.

Natasha takes a long sip of coffee. “Clint, do you know why I had the views I did during the Accords?”

He wipes some crumbs off his face and shakes his head. “Because you were worried about how they would affect me and Laura and you didn’t want your family to get in trouble?”

“That’s true,” Natasha acknowledges. “But it’s not the whole truth. I’ve had a life, Clint. I know what it means to see both sides of the coin. I knew what the consequences of a fall-out could be, not just now but what effects it could have in the future. And that caused me to see things in a way I knew _no one_ else could see -- not Steve, not Tony, not even Sam.” She pauses as her mind flashes on Tony at the compound, sitting alone with his whiskey, hurt and trying not to let anyone know how badly he’d been hurt. “The Red Room wasn’t any kind of model for a good life, Clint. But I know what it feels like to watch a family get stripped away, little by little, bit by bit. So I made a decision. It’s a decision that I sometimes regret and I know it was hard, but I knew I had to do it because it was hard. Because no one else was going to make the decision for me.”

Clint lets out a long breath and moves back to the table, sitting down. “Are you going to tell me that’s why you decided to go with Steve and Sam? Because you knew it was hard and you had to make a decision and you knew the consequences?”

Natasha swallows hard, trying to focus on the heaviness of the conversation and not the comically hysterical way pieces of toast are stuck to his five o’clock shadow. “Yes. And no. I told you and I told Laura, and I wasn’t lying -- what Tony told me about Ross genuinely worried me. I couldn’t be the cause of your family getting hurt, Clint. Not after all I’ve gone through to keep you safe. I owed you that much.”

“So you left because you felt that you owed us,” Clint says.

Natasha nods into her coffee. “It’s one way to put it, yes. I shouldn’t have let myself stay away as long as I did, but...Clint, we’ve been this way for two years now. If Thanos hadn’t happened, would this still be as much of an issue?”

Clint doesn’t answer for a long time, his mouth moving back and forth as if he’s chewing on some invisible piece of food. “Well, I guess you really can’t prepare for stuff like this, can you?”

“Not something like half the universe disappearing, no,” Natasha agrees. “But while you wallow again this morning, I’m going to actually get stuff done.”

“What stuff?” Clint asks in confusion. “There’s not really much to clean...not like anyone’s here to make a mess.”

“I’m not talking about cleaning,” Natasha responds. “Although, Cooper’s room could use some improvement. He’s worse than you were with that Brooklyn apartment. I’m going out and I’m going to keep thinking of how we can fix this. Maybe I’ll see about contacting Steve.”

“And you can’t do that here?”

Natasha shakes her head. “If I’m here, all I’m going to do is get distracted and think about what I can’t change. And I’m going to worry about you and your wallowing. So if I’m going to feel stuck, I want to at least be away from the farm for a little bit.”

Clint makes a face. “I don’t like it, but it’s fair,” he says, waving his hand. “In any case, I’d advise getting out now before Nate decides to raise hell again.”

Natasha nods and gets up from the table, making her way upstairs. She goes into the master bedroom and pauses at the door, then opens Laura’s drawers and sifts through her clothes until she finds a long sleeved shirt and a pair of maroon pants. “What’s mine is yours,” she mutters as she pulls them on easily. When she bends over to shake out her hair, something on the dresser catches her eye, glinting in the light of the morning sun. Natasha peers closer, her eyes watering when she realizes it’s her ring, which Laura has placed on top of her small jewelry box. Pristine and untouched, it sits alone, as if it’s taunting Natasha that not only is Laura not here, she’s missed way more than just a few breakfasts and children’s stories. She swallows down her emotions, pushes back her tears, and takes her ring, putting it back on her finger. By the time she’s walked back downstairs, game face fully intact, Clint has moved to the couch and is spread out on his back with Lucky in front of him.

“I’ll be home soon,” Natasha says, putting on her shoes and reaching for the keys to the truck. “Don’t go crazy while I’m gone.”

“I’ll try not to,” Clint says. Natasha sees him glance at the woven keyring indicative of what car she’s decided to take but leaves the house before he can say anything; she knows she doesn’t need to explain why she feels better driving the old truck than the minivan in this particular case. As she backs up, heading away from the farm, she realizes she doesn’t actually have any kind of plan. She might call Steve, at least to check in, but she doesn’t know if he’s going to have any real solution -- or if there’s anything she can even do. In reality, Natasha knows she had just wanted to get away and let her mind regain some clarity between Clint’s depressive state and the stress of trying to figure out how to adjust to a life without the people who were so important to both of them.

When Lila had been born, she had made the commitment to be a mother -- to be present. That hadn’t meant she needed to live a domestic life, but it _had_ meant that she’d finally accepted who she was to Clint and Laura and, more importantly, who she was to their kids. Up until Tony had vaguely implied that Clint’s family was in danger, she felt she’d done a pretty good job at trying to settle into a life that was slightly normal -- a life that didn’t involve running off at every turn. And while she knew she could never be what Clint had been for years, what she had met him as and watched him grow into -- a grounded father and homebody, someone who was just as comfortable, if not more comfortable, sitting around in flannel and work pants as he was sitting on a roof and shooting with a bow -- she had been proud of the contributions she had made, and the life she had cultivated.

I wish I didn’t feel like I’ve disappointed you,” Natasha murmurs out loud as she slows while approaching an intersection. She glances out the side window and squints; a baby goat that she doesn’t remember seeing before is wandering around in the open field next to her car. Something about the way the goat is walking seems off, and in the end, Natasha doesn’t know exactly what it is that makes her pull over instead of continuing to drive straight. She suspects it’s a combination of vulnerable feelings and pure curiosity, or at least, that’s what she tells herself as turns off the truck and gets out.

“Hey,” she says quietly, letting her feet hit the soft ground. “Hey, where’s your mom?”

The goat turns but doesn’t come close, instead stepping back in what Natasha recognizes as fear. She crouches low and holds her hand out tentatively.

“It’s alright. You’re scared, I know. That’s okay. I’m scared, too.”

The goat takes a few more steps towards her, and Natasha can see now that it’s disoriented more than anything else. She keeps her hand steady, concentrating on the stillness of her body, until the goat comes close enough for her to touch it. She rests a hand on his back, noticing how its body is trembling.

The farm, despite being a farm, had never had animals of any kind (much to Lila’s continued dismay.) But one of the neighboring farms had some goats and chickens, and Laura and Clint would often take Lila and Nate over to visit or help out with some chores when the owners went away for a weekend. On a few of those visits, Natasha had tagged along, raising her eyebrows at the way Clint interacted with the animals as if he could understand them.

“Don’t be so skeptical, Nat,” Clint had said as he bottle-fed a baby goat. “This is the real domestic life.”

“I’m only judging you a little bit,” Natasha had replied cheekily while leaning against the wooden fence, watching Laura and Cooper collect some eggs in the chicken coop. “Besides, the animals here won’t even get close to me.”

“Maybe they’re scared of redheads,” Clint had suggested with a wink.

“Maybe not, since your dog is an animal and seems to like me just fine,” Natasha had retorted.

“Animals can tell when you’re comfortable or not,” Laura had interrupted, overhearing the conversation. “They can tell by someone’s presence whether or not they feel safe with you. You’re probably giving off the vibe that you don’t want them around.”

Natasha moves her hand over the goat’s body, suddenly feeling sympathetic and annoyed about the fact that she can’t figure out what it wants. It’s a feeling she knows all too well, and she pushes memories of Bruce out of her mind.

“I wish you would tell me what’s wrong,” Natasha says quietly, watching the goat’s eyes dart back and forth. “I wish someone would tell _me_ what’s wrong.”

The goat flinches suddenly and then backs up again, darting away. Natasha watches it go, feeling confused, and then gets up from the ground. “I hope at least you find your mother or someone somewhere,” she says heavily, walking back to the truck. When she gets inside, she realizes she has a missed call from Clint on her cell phone which is lying on the seat next to her.

A missed call -- but as far as she can tell, no voicemail. That puzzles Natasha, who has known Clint to incessantly call and bother her if something was wrong. If this was any other instance, she would have chalked up a random missed call to a missing grocery list item or even Lila stealing the phone. But things aren’t normal, and half the world is gone, and Lila’s not here, and neither is Laura or Cooper. Natasha can’t help but feel uneasy, and she backs up the truck, turning around and driving back to the farm before she can talk herself out of it.

It’s not a long drive back, but she still finds herself apprehensive when she pulls up the driveway. There’s nothing that seems out of the ordinary in their new normal, however -- no sound of children running around, no fresh food being cooked and scents wafting out open windows, not even Lucky’s bark. She exits the truck and makes her way up the steps, trying to steel herself for what she knows will be more of Clint’s attitude. She had said she’d come back with a solution, with something to help, but all she’d come back with was a short drive, a weird feeling, and a run-in with a random baby goat who stirred up some old memories.

“Yeah, I know,” she says as she opens the door, trying to head off the argument before it can start. “I’m --”

“Natasha.”

Natasha’s stomach drops to her feet, her blood turning to ice and sending chills through her body. She barely registers Clint sitting on the couch, clutching his phone in his hand with tears in his eyes. Natasha closes her eyes and opens them over and over, trying to convince herself that she’s dreaming, that maybe she’s fallen asleep while driving and is lost in some dreams or more memories that just seem real.

“Laura?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh, I had a pretty intense past two months...which included getting married, going on a honeymoon, and [announcing a book deal](http://isjustprogress.tumblr.com/post/179696048564/oh-hi-tumblr-if-youre-wondering-why-i-keep) (which is part of the reason these updates have been a little slower than usual anyway, as I've been working secretively on the manuscript for the past few months with my editor in the time I'd normally be writing.) Oh, and I had a hugely terrible case of writer's block which was probably from me over-extending myself writing-wise, and from being out of the habit of writing regularly with real life stuff for like, a full month. But I swear I haven't abandoned this fic and I'm still very much working on it and involved in this story! I promise not to make everyone wait too long before I post the next few chapters.
> 
> As for the ending of this chapter... ;) We're obviously going off book as I'd like to complete this before Avengers 4 rather than drag it out until we have some canon to work with. The goal of this fic has always been about family, and how family reacts and changes and loves and understands, and I'm really excited to do some exploring of that in the context of things post snap. 
> 
> Thank you for staying with me and for all your support and kudos! As always, I'm on tumblr @isjustprogress for all fic and flails.


	9. Chapter 9

**2017**

 

Natasha is almost zoned out when the words snap her awake, filtering sharply into her comms.

“Strike!”

She moves without hesitation, pushing a button on the controller that sends a small orange dot flying across the black screen of coordinates. She doesn’t realize she’s holding her breath until the dot explodes into a swollen circle, allowing Natasha to exhale as she leans back on the bed in the safe house.

“Confirmed strike.”

Natasha rubs her eyes and waits, making sure nothing else is going to alert her of danger or assistance. When she hears the other end of the comm click off, signaling Steve’s done with needing her for the time being, she lets herself close her eyes again. Her most recent trip to Iowa was taking its toll; she’s more groggy and tired than usual and she knows it doesn’t go unnoticed. Steve, for his part, hadn’t questioned the fact that she needed to leave every so often and never asked where she was going, even if he probably suspected she was going to the farm -- they hadn’t known each other for years for nothing. But Natasha’s grateful he’s never asked, a confirmation of unspoken respect and trust that existed between them -- even though for once, if he _had_ asked, the answer would be simple and not a lie: “I need to protect his family.”

She almost laughs when she thinks about how tired she is now versus years ago; Lila and Cooper and Nathaniel and Clint and Laura and everything they’d gone through as a family combined with everything they’d experienced at SHIELD and with the Avengers was ten times more exhausting than what she’d been forced to endure in the Red Room prior to Clint recruiting her. She takes a few deep breaths and opens her eyes just as the door to the safe house creaks open.

“That was close.”

“You’re one to talk,” Steve scoffs as he enters, closing the door tightly behind him. He strips off his gloves. “You were behind a screen, not out in the field. Wouldn’t have been _your_ blood on the ground if you’d missed your signal.”

“If I recall, you didn’t ask me to come with you so I could fight bad guys,” Natasha counters with a smirk. “You asked me because you needed my amazing recon and hacking skills.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t because of your wit and company,” Steve deadpans. “You okay, Nat?”

Natasha hasn’t realized she’s been zoning out again until she refocuses, finding Steve’s concerned face.

“Fine,” she says a little too automatically. “Just tired.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Tired enough to almost miss having my back?”

“Oh, relax,” Natasha responds with an eye roll. “You were fine. And I wasn’t going to abandon you, I got you out of there and did my job, didn’t I?”

Steve purses his lips, frowning slightly. “I know it’s not my business, Nat, but…”

“But?”

Steve sighs. “But, you don’t have to keep going on these trips.”

Natasha ignores him, pulling up her blonde hair in a short ponytail. “You’re right, it _is_ none of your business.” She fixes him with a stare. “It’s _my_ business to go where I want to go, just like it’s your business to stay on these missions as long as you want to. Just like it’s Sam’s business to take solo missions for things he really feels like he needs to take care of.”

“You know we’re only on these missions because we still need to be underground,” Steve says, sitting down on the bed. “And I can’t go back yet. Not when the world still hates everything I stand for and these Accords are still a thing. But I can’t stop protecting people. I can’t leave them helpless when I know I can keep doing something to help them.” He pauses, looking up, smiling slightly. “I’m thankful that you’re here, Nat. I really didn’t want to do this alone.”

“I’m glad I’m here too,” Natasha says, putting a hand on his knee. “You know me. Can’t stop fighting, right?”

“I guess.” Steve pauses. “Can I ask you something?”

“Is the sky blue?” Natasha asks bluntly. “Of course you can, Steve. How long have we known each other?”

“And yet, I still maintain I didn’t invite you here for your company,” Steve mutters, rolling his own eyes. “Look, I’m just curious, and I feel like I’ve got as much of a right to know as anyone else, especially after everything we’ve been through. Was it ever a thing? With you and Clint?”

Natasha takes a breath and lets it out slowly, debating about how to answer. Saying yes would be the barest form of truth while still lying, though it had the potential to open up a chasm of other questions if Steve decided to pursue the conversation further. Saying no would be the easiest answer, but she feels like she’d be kidding both of them if she thought she could get away with it being believable.

“We had something,” she says slowly, already feeling bad about using the past tense. “For awhile. But you know that he was married already when we met.” 

“I know,” Steve replies. “I just...I guess I just always wondered. It seemed like it was fate. Like you were soulmates or something.”

Natasha can’t help it. She bursts out laughing, trying hard to cover up her mirth by shoving her hand over her mouth. Steve raises an eyebrow.

“Not one for sentimentality, huh?”

“Sorry,” she says, stifling another laugh that threatens to explode from somewhere inside her. “I just always thought the concept of soulmates was so _stupid_. I mean, I get finding someone you connect with and trust, but the idea that you have someone out there who’s your actual better half?”

“You don’t believe it?” Steve asks curiously.

Natasha shrugs, thinking of Laura and Clint and how each of them complemented her in a different way that changed her but didn’t at the same time. Clint was her better half in many ways, but Laura was too, and it had nothing to do with the fact that she had been missing anything about herself until she met them. She had been missing things she didn’t know she even wanted -- a home, unconditional love, trust, love, a real family -- but those things were things that enriched her life, holes that were filled by two people who opened their hearts and arms to someone who they didn’t even know if they could fully trust. It was similar to how she felt now, being away because she was trying to protect them and protect the world, feeling empty and lonely -- but because she missed them, not because she felt like she was less of a person by not having them constantly around.

“It implies that you’re not a real person until you find that person who has the missing parts of you that you didn’t have before,” Natasha says when she speaks again. “The concept of soulmates makes it seem like you can’t be a fully functional person if you don’t have someone who is that one perfect half moon of a whole. And that,” she continues, meeting Steve’s eyes, “is absolute bullshit.”

Steve lets himself smile slowly. “So, really? Nothing ever happened between you guys?”

Natasha shakes her head. “Believe what you want, Steve. It won’t make a difference and I won’t tell you the truth either way.”

Steve laughs as he runs a hand down his face. “You’re a piece of work, Nat.”

Natasha’s about to respond with an equally friendly but sharp barb when her ears pick up on the sound of movement outside the door. She holds up a hand, giving Steve a look that immediately causes him to tense, reaching for the knife hidden in his boot. He moves quietly behind Natasha, who stands slowly, one hand on the handle of her glock.

She has her gun out and cocked as soon as the door opens, but the moment she sees the familiar boot and hears the familiar first footstep, she drops her gun in a loud relieved exhale.

“Jesus, you couldn’t have _knocked_?!”

Fury smiles and closes the door. “I figured you’d know I’m the only person who doesn’t need a key...or who knows where to find you.” He glances at Steve. “Rogers.”

“Sir.” Steve relaxes as well, folding his arms and putting the knife down on the ground. “Why are you here?”

Fury gestures to the safe house. “Just making my rounds. Hill is taking care of some of the more...administrative stuff, and I’m trying to make sure my two best agents aren’t getting themselves killed.”

“Well, we’re doing mostly okay on the not dying end of things,” Steve says sarcastically. “Did you come here to tell us the world isn’t ending?”

“The world isn’t ending,” Fury answers, sitting down on the bed. Natasha sits down as well, but Steve remains standing. “At least, not that I know of.” He turns his gaze to Natasha. “And you seem to be doing your job pretty well.”

‘It keeps me busy.” She’s suddenly aware of Fury’s one eye giving her more of a focus than usual, and Steve seems to sense it as well, because he clears his throat quietly.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he says, nodding at Fury and turning around, disappearing into the small bedroom that Natasha knows leads to an attached bathroom. As he disappears, Fury raises an eyebrow.

“Wanna tell me how you’re _really_ doing, Romanoff?”

“I guess,” Natasha responds, knowing there’s no point in even trying to pretend at this point. She does feel a little comforted knowing that at least Fury knew about Clint and Laura, because quite frankly, she’s exhausted of pretending.

“You guess, huh?” Fury gives her a knowing look. “You’re doing what you’ve done all your life -- protecting and fighting, keeping the world safe. We’re grateful for that, you know.”

Natasha smiles sadly, looking up at him. “Nothing lasts forever,” she says softly. Fury seems to understand, letting out a small sigh.

“I keep my own tabs on Clint’s family,” he says, his voice just as quiet. “I know what happened with Laura’s dad and with SHIELD, and how he made sure you were all off the grid after the Accords. But we’re still vigilant, because we know we have to be.”

“Are you going to tell me that I don’t need to be here?” Natasha asks. Fury shakes his head.

“No,” he replies. “I know about Ross checking in with Tony. I think it’s a legitimate reason for you to worry, if the farm is where you’re really spending all your time now. But you’re right, nothing lasts forever.” He looks around the safe house. “This will end -- you’ll be needed again by the world, without masks and beards and dyed hair. I just don’t know how.”

“Spoken like a true wise man,” Natasha says, trying and failing to keep the joking tone out of her voice. “How are _you_ really doing? You and Hill?”

“About the same as you,” Fury admits, leaning forward on his elbows. “Moving around when we can. Putting out fires where we can. Tracking you and keeping tabs on Tony and Clint. Making sure Vision is still safe.”

“He has a transponder and checks in with Tony every week,” Natasha says. “He told me so himself.”

“And even that can change,” Fury says conversationally. Natasha gives him a startled look.

“What?”

“We’re not concerned,” Fury continues. “Yet. We think he’s just trying to live somewhat of a normal life and knowing that Wanda is with him helps.”

“Clint checks in with Wanda,” Natasha says without hesitation.

Fury smiles. “I know. He’s the one who alerted me to the fact that Vision turned his transponder off. Wanda told him, and Clint knew that Tony would be worried if he wasn’t aware, so he contacted him.”

“Oh.”

It doesn’t surprise her that Clint’s found a way to stay connected, even in a small way, despite the fact he was supposed to be lying low. She didn’t think he would ever stop talking to Wanda, nor did she expect him to. The fact that he was on decent speaking terms with Tony surprised her a little, but then again, she knew he’d do anything for the sake of someone he cared about -- even if it meant continuing to make nice with someone who was responsible for putting his entire life in danger.

“You okay, Natasha?”

Natasha shakes herself out of her own thoughts, taking a quick look over her shoulder to make sure Steve hasn’t walked back into the room. The door to the bedroom is still closed, and whether or not it’s intentional, Natasha figures he’s purposely giving her time alone.

“I guess I just didn’t plan for this,” she says after a moment. “I don’t know what I planned for, actually. Maybe I thought it would stop.” She pauses, letting her words sink in, and suddenly feels sad. “It won’t ever stop, will it?”

Fury remains quiet for a long time. “I think,” he says slowly, “it will stop if you want it to stop. And I think you know how that feels.”

Natasha nods; she doesn’t have to ask whether or not he’s referring to Clint because she knows he is. She manages a smile.

“When I’m here, I miss them. When I’m there, I’m not sure if I’m making a mistake by pretending things in the world don’t need my help.”

“And when you’re not there, how do they feel?”

Natasha shakes her head. “Laura is Laura,” she says quietly. “And Clint is Clint. And the kids...they know and understand what they know. The situation could be better. But they all know why I couldn’t stay.”

Fury puts a hand on her shoulder. “You know, I know you don’t like hearing it, but the girl who was brought into my office a long time ago, who wouldn’t even listen to me talk, has come a long way.”

Natasha huffs out a small laugh. “Yeah, well. I don’t like to admit it, but she had help.”

“Yes,” Fury agrees as the door opens and Steve enters again, dressed down in a pair of jeans and a tight-fitting shirt. “And I hope she’ll remember that she _always_ has help if she asks for it.”

 

***

 

Natasha comes back to the farm on a day when the birds are singing and the air has warmed from a chill reminiscent of a biting winter to a breeze that feels less like standing in the middle of a snowstorm; the trees are still sparse and bare, their arms brittle and stretched and weary from months of snow and ice, but near the front of the house the first beginnings of spring are peeking through as Laura’s garden begins to awaken from a long slumber.

Laura is cleaning with the windows open to air out the house and Clint is bent over fixing a floorboard, glasses perched jaggedly against the bridge of his nose, Nate toddling around as he tries to acquaint himself with the wide world of walking, Cooper and Lila are holed up in the sun room with their noses stuck in their latest books when Natasha opens the door, announcing her presence with a rush of wind and a large bag that lands squarely on the floor.

“Oh Jesus,” Laura says when she notices the open gash across Natasha’s left arm, one that looks like it’s been there for days. Natasha shrugs and Clint takes her into the bathroom to get cleaned up, and Laura tries to ignore it all while making sure Nate doesn’t walk into any part of the room that hasn’t been officially baby proofed.

“Oh come on,” Laura walks in on Natasha saying when she finally wrestles Nate into her arms for more than five seconds. “You act like you’re worried about me.”

“I _am_ worried about you,” Clint replies. “Get over it.”

“Natanata!”

“Someone understands me,” Natasha says, blowing a kiss to Nate. She turns back to Clint and rolls her eyes. “Seriously, you’re becoming your wife. I can’t have both of you worrying that I’m going to get blown up every second I’m not sitting at home with a drink and slippers.”

Laura sighs, shifting Nate in her arms as the baby puts his mouth against her shirt sleeve. She ignores the sensation of wet drool.

“You know that you signed up for us to be worried about you,” she says just as pointedly, leaning against the wall. “We _don’t_ know what you’re doing. We don’t know where you’re going. We only know that you can take care of yourself --”

“And that should be enough,” Natasha interrupts. “Look, I don’t expect you to know every single detail of my life on the road. And quite honestly, I’d rather you didn’t. This isn’t SHIELD, this isn’t me and Clint --”

“But it’s _you_ ,” Laura argues. “And we care about you, Natasha. I could give two craps about what Steve and Sam are doing, but I care about what _you’re_ doing and if _you’re_ safe.”

Natasha sighs and looks down, focusing on where Clint has been cleaning the dried blood from her wound. “It was a dumb accident,” she says finally. “I was running and tripped on a barbed wire that I didn’t see. It tore through my suit. That’s all.”

Laura locks eyes with Clint in the five seconds it takes him to look up, and then she looks back down at Nate. Clint finishes checking her over without saying anything, and then stands up.

“You’re a part of this family. That’s not new news,” he says as he chucks the wet gauze into the trash can. “We’re a team, Nat. And we will always worry about you the same way you worry about us, because I know that you do.”

Natasha doesn’t answer but Laura sees her face change, almost as if she’s annoyed that he’s managed to pull that revelation out of her -- despite the fact that Laura thinks there’s no way Natasha could be annoyed about what her or Clint see or find or pick up on after so many years together. It calms her, at least a little, enough so that she can leave them alone and go attend to Cooper, who she can hear yelling upstairs.

Later, while Laura is stirring pasta sauce and Clint is helping Cooper and Lila with homework while also making sure the dog doesn’t tear apart everything in its path, Natasha enters the kitchen and perches near Laura’s designated space.

“Steve asked about us.”

Laura furrows her brow, then lets her face smooth out.

“Oh. Really.”

She continues stirring sauce; she feels like there’s nothing much that surprises her anymore. When Clint had come out to her about having feelings about Natasha, fumbling his way over the confession during morning coffee at a time when Cooper was barely two, Laura had thought about it and responded to his anxious words with the same nonchalance. At this point, she wonders if it would even matter if Steve knew the truth about Natasha and their family.

“So what did you tell him?”

“The truth,” Natasha says so plainly that Laura does turn around. She carefully turns the dial down on the stove so the sauce can simmer safely.

“The truth?”

“Well, I told him I had feelings for Clint,” Natasha clarifies. “Not a lie. I told him that we had something, but he was already married when we met. Which is the truth. But also it’s not.” She scrunches up her face. “Are you mad?” 

“Why?” Laura asks, genuinely surprised. “Why would I be mad?”

Natasha shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Laura sighs, folding her arms across her chest. “Nat, this isn’t 2007.” 

“It’s not 2004 either,” Natasha reminds her. Laura turns back around, picking up the wooden spoon again and making lazy circles in the red sauce.

“You know, I never cared about the specifics of our relationship,” she says carefully. “I cared about what it meant for our family, for you, for me, for the kids – but in the end, our family is _our_ family, and it doesn’t matter what form that comes in.”

“ _You_ don’t care,” Natasha says, her voice heavy. Laura can tell she’s walking closer because her low alto is getting easier to hear. “But people do. People like Steve, who will always wonder or ask.”

“Natasha.” Laura shifts so she can meet her eyes. “Be honest with me -- did Steve believe you when you told him that you and Clint weren’t a thing?”

Laura notices she looks slightly uncomfortable, as if she’s not sure why she’s being interrogated. To be honest, Laura thinks _she_ doesn’t even know why she’s the one doing the interrogating; this wasn’t any kind of fight. But she was frustrated, and she was frustrated in a way that bothered her.

“It’s not about that,” Natasha says. “It’s...I guess I just realized it’s the first time someone has really _asked_.”

As soon as she says the words, Laura realizes that she’s right. The fact was, they’d spent so much time in a bubble of their own relationship, especially after the Accords, that Laura didn’t think anyone was really paying attention anymore.

“It’s weird,” she says finally, locking eyes with Natasha. “It doesn’t feel like it should be any kind of issue anymore. At least, not between us. But I guess it’s still something that we have to think about from time to time.”

Natasha shrugs. “I think that eventually, it might not be,” she says a little cryptically. “But it’s nice to be reminded every once in awhile, isn’t it? Of the things that matter?”

Laura smiles. There are things she knows about their situation, like the fact that they would never be normal or fluid or without bumps. But she wants to tell Natasha that she’s damn proud of the person she’s become, the one who is talking to her about families and relationships like they matter, because she _believes_ that they matter.

“Yes,” she says as she steps forward, enveloping her in a hug. She kisses Natasha on the cheek. “You know, I should mark this day. A day when you actually get sentimental about us.”

“Well, I think we’ve seen enough together that it makes sense to say things out loud every once in awhile, right?” Natasha asks. “I mean, you just never know when you might lose it all.”

Laura nods, not wanting to think about the fact that Natasha’s words carry more weight than she’d admit to. When she was with just Clint, her world was a constant worry of what would be the next thing that would throw her (and their) life into turmoil. Natasha made that worry worse and each child, more inquisitive and challenging than the last (and not just because she was getting older) introduced an entirely new set of worries and overbearing thoughts into her life. No longer was it just herself who was at stake if Clint came home hurt, if Natasha got in trouble, if Laura herself had a medical emergency. No longer it was just herself who was at stake if Cooper ran away from home, or Lila didn’t come back from school, or Nathaniel got too sick.

But it was an intricately braided life that she had built for herself out of trust and love, one that she had fought for, one that she knows she’d be stupid to take for granted. True, things had changed -- the lines between take-out dinners and homemade meals, between too many toys at Christmas and gifts peppered throughout the year because of business and timing -- those things were slightly more blurred. But just because the kids were getting older and Clint was home permanently, it didn’t mean routines had changed. Laura had always prided herself on making a home that was open, warm, and full of love, whether that love included Chinese food from the newly opened restaurant down the road or fresh pears in a salad.

There’s a loud thump that Laura recognizes as a door closing and in another second, Lucky is barreling down the stairs. Before Laura can say a silent prayer that she’s removed the baby gate for the day in lieu of her mom taking Nathaniel for the night, the dog is sliding into the kitchen, Cooper and Lila close on its heels. Clint follows more slowly, appearing at the doorway with a sheepish look, and Laura catches his eye.

She tries to take in the moment, as chaotic as it is, thinking of Natasha’s words.

_You just never know when you might lose it all._

 

**2018**

 

Natasha stands in place, rooted to the ground as if her feet have been stapled to the floor. She closes her eyes then opens them again, still unsure if this is something that’s really happening or if it’s a dream. Maybe she had fallen asleep at the wheel and was going to crash into another car soon. Maybe the entire day, from announcing she was going out to talking like an idiot to a random baby goat, had been a dream. Maybe she was still in bed.

“Natasha.”

It’s Laura’s voice -- her soft voice filled with longing and fear and tentativeness, the voice she knows so well, the one she’s loved for so many years -- that makes her realize this actually _is_ real. She has no idea how or why, but she doesn’t want to focus on that right now. For once, the part of her brain that usually demands every practical answer and shred of evidence is silenced, outweighed by the magnitude and surprise of something she might go so far as to say is a miracle.

“Laura? I…” She trails off, looking at Clint. “How?”

Clint shakes his head. “We don’t know. Not really,” he says, and it looks like he’s trying to work things out in his brain as he’s saying the words. “I went upstairs to give Nate a bath and my ears started ringing...high-pitched noises, like my aids were picking up some weird feedback. I had to take them out because I couldn’t concentrate and when I put them back in I heard noises downstairs -- I ran down.”

Natasha swallows. “Cooper? Lila?”

Clint nods at the stairs. “In their room. They’re -- I don’t know. Confused, I think. Lila’s kind of freaking out, Cooper’s trying to take care of her. Nate -- I put him in his playpen, I just needed to think. I called you, but you didn’t pick up.”

Natasha moves to the couch, stepping over Lucky who is standing silently in front of them, wagging his tail patiently and looking at the adults as if it’s any other normal day and they’re supposed to cater to his every whim. She sits down and puts her hand on Laura’s shoulder, squeezing it. If her voice had helped seal the deal, the firmness of her body drives home the fact that yes, this is real -- somehow.

“You’re real.”

“Of course I’m real,” Laura says, sounding slightly affronted. Natasha doesn’t move her hand away, but she also doesn’t look at Clint again, somehow needing to focus on just Laura for at least this moment.

“Do you...do you have any idea what happened?”

Laura nods. “I do,” she says slowly. “Something, at least. I remember fading...like I was going to sleep. But that’s it. I feel like I just woke up from a nap, but I don’t think I did.” She looks at Clint, and Natasha knows that as much as she’s handling this with uncertainty, Clint had to be handling it ten times worse. She can practically see it in his face, the way he’s trying to hold it together without losing it completely. “Do we have anything to drink?”

Natasha almost wants to laugh at how normal things seem to be. If it weren’t for days and weeks of adjusting to a life where people they loved had disappeared into thin air -- a life where battles had been fought and won, where heavy conversations with dirty laundry had been aired and argued -- she would brush it all off. She would roll her eyes at the vulnerability being shown in the room and order a round of real (and strong) drinks for the adults while insisting Clint and/or Laura take care of their children, because working around the house always made her feel like everything was in control. Thinking of this, Natasha nods and gets up from the couch.

“I’ll get you something.”

Lucky perks up, his sense of normalcy in dog logic being that if someone was going into the kitchen, it meant he was getting food. She takes out two mugs and opens a box of lavender-infused tea, dumping two bags into the earthy green mugs and filling them with hot water from the instant tab on the sink. For good measure, she decides to just feed Lucky anyway, since she doesn’t think anyone is going to care.

When she brings the mugs back into the living room, she’s surprised to see the scene before her has changed, given that she’s only been away for two minutes or so. Clint is standing up, pacing back and forth as if he can’t decide whether he wants to move or stay still. Laura is looking concerned, playing with her hands.

“I gotta go talk to them,” Clint says as Natasha approaches, although she can tell that the last thing he wants to do is leave Laura. Natasha recognizes his movements and frantic brain synapse firings as needing to maintain control of the situation.

“I’ll go,” she says quietly, glancing at Laura and handing him a mug. “Just be here for a bit with her, okay? We’ll figure this out.”

There would be time to talk to Laura, to be adults, to fully comprehend what had happened and what they had gone through -- at least, Natasha thinks, there had _better_ be time. But for now, she needed to do what she had done when Laura had suffered her miscarriage years ago. She had to somehow figure out how to steer a family that had never really been hers to begin with, but one that she had become a part of in a way that no one would have ever expected.

Natasha climbs the stairs slowly, pausing at the top and looking down the hall. The door to Cooper’s room is ajar, light is streaming from inside. She takes a deep breath, then walks in.

Natasha’s not sure what she’s expecting to see. Laura hadn’t come back looking changed or different in any way, and there was nothing that seemed to indicate her children would be any different. Still, Natasha breathes a sigh of relief when she sees Cooper sitting on his bed with Lila next to him, both of them whispering to each other with their heads close.

“Hey,” Natasha says quietly. Cooper looks up slowly but Lila moves quicker, her eyes lighting up.

“Auntie Nat!”

She climbs over the bed, scrambling off the covers. In another instant, she’s running towards Natasha who bends down and hugs her, relishing the feel of Lila’s small body in her arms.

“Hey, how are you doing?”

Lila shrugs, pulling back and taking a piece of her hair in her mouth. She chews on the strand. “I dunno. Mommy was scared.”

Natasha keeps her face passive, nodding towards Cooper. “I know. How’s your brother?”

Lila shrugs again. “I wanna go see daddy.”

Natasha weighs the words in her mind, wanting Clint to have as much alone time with Laura as he might need. Both of them were old enough to feel the effects of this situation; Lila, for as much as she might pick up on things more intuitively than other young kids, was still blessedly young enough to not be bothered too much.

“You know what daddy would love?” she asks, smoothing down her hair. “I think he’d love a picture. If you draw him a picture, I’ll bring it down for him.”

Lila scrunches up her face. “K. Can I draw in here with you?”

“Yes,” Natasha allows as Lila runs out of the room, going to get her papers and markers. While she’s gone, Natasha gets up and moves back to the bed, sitting next to Cooper.

“Coop.”

Cooper glances up and gives Natasha a look that seems intensely guarded. “You’re back.”

“I am,” Natasha agrees, and although she wants to feel happy about that, it feels like the reunion is strangely forced. Cooper isn’t acting angry or upset (at least to her eyes, god knows Laura and Clint could probably pick up on stuff she was missing) but something feels off. “Are you okay?”

Cooper shrugs and shifts on the bed. “We were here,” he says, his voice monotone and so similar to his dad’s. “We were here and then...we weren’t?” He pauses, frowning. “You were there, right?”

“I --“ Natasha hesitates, because she’d never told Cooper that she was going to help Wanda and then go to Wakanda because of Thanos. There hadn’t been time for that, hell, there hadn’t even been time for her to call Clint and tell him what was going on. And truthfully, at the time, Natasha hadn’t thought she even needed to tell Clint about everything that was happening. Whatever big battle this was, however _bad_ it was, she didn’t think it was something he should leave his family for. They had mostly all of the Avengers, plus Vision and an entire Wakandan army -- it certainly wasn’t like they were walking into a fight unprepared. As far as Cooper knew, she was doing stuff with Steve and Sam, and maybe it was kind of Avengers related. But the fact that Cooper had automatically assumed (however rightfully) that she’d been involved hurts her in a way that she can’t accurately describe.

“Come on, Nat,” he continues when she stays silent. “Do you know what happened?”

An appropriate question, albeit one coming from a teenager who’s going to take no bullshit for an answer the same way his mother and father would. She knows she’s not going to tell him the truth, but she also knows she can’t outright lie about the situation the way they all might have if Cooper was a few years younger. Lila they could still skirt around the issues with, but Cooper had already seen too much. Natasha’s heart throbs painfully when she remembers the conversation Clint had with her a year or so ago, telling her how Cooper had seen Peter Parker on the news and asked questions, worried that someone so close to his own age was doing dangerous things alone and with no one to watch out for him. 

“Kind of,” she says. “You’re right. I was there. And I saw things that were really scary. But I don’t know any more than that, Coop. I honestly don’t, and I wish I did.” _I don’t even know how or why you’re back._ “If there’s anything you want to talk about --”

“Nah,” Cooper says, cutting her off. “I’m okay.”

Natasha watches helplessly as he gets off the bed and walks out of the room, feeling like she should do more to stop him but not knowing exactly how. Instead, she lets him go and turns her attention to Lila, who she realizes has perched a little too closely to her leg while drawing. Natasha leans over, trying to get a look at what she’s creating, but the positioning of Lila’s body and the way her hand is splayed over the construction paper makes it hard for her to see properly. In the wake of Cooper’s abrupt departure, there’s silence, and it’s a silence that bothers her. It takes her a moment to realize why -- even with everyone back, it was _still_ too somber, as if everyone was unsure of where they were.

“Natasha?”

She hadn’t heard Laura come up the stairs, not even with the help of the two creaky steps that Clint hadn’t had a chance to fix yet. Lila jumps up so she can see her mom over the bed and grins widely.

“Hi, mommy!”

Laura smiles and Natasha finds herself carefully watching her face, searching for any sign of hidden anxiety or warning.

“Hi, Lila baby.”

“I drawed you a thing!” She picks up her paper and waves it. “I’m gonna draw daddy a thing now.”

“Lila, do you want to keep drawing here for awhile?” Natasha asks gently, figuring Cooper’s probably downstairs. If she had to guess, Cooper coming downstairs to see his dad was a code for Laura to leave them alone and come up here, whether or not she wanted to talk to Natasha or not.

“Yes,” Lila answers, sitting down again and grabbing for a crayon. Natasha leans over and kisses the top of her head, trying to control her emotions, then walks out of the room. She meets Laura in the hallway and without saying a word, they both retreat into the master bedroom.

“I don’t know what to say,” Natasha says, not giving Laura a chance to speak. She realizes she can’t help it, she’s been _needing_ to talk. “I don’t know what you’ve been through. I don’t know what you’ve experienced.” 

“I don’t know what there is to talk about,” Laura admits softly. “I told you, I wasn’t anywhere. It was like I was sleeping, but without the dreams. I do remember something happening, like I was getting lighter, fading somehow...but then I didn’t feel anything.”

Natasha nods, replaying Lila’s words in her head. _Mommy was scared._ Laura either didn’t want to talk or wanted to be strong, and Natasha has no idea how much of what she’s saying is true. Without knowing any of the variables or having any experience, she feels like all she can do is nod and not push, because she’s not going to force someone who just came back into her life -- who she thought she might never see again -- to be uncomfortable.

“I think this is what it was like with me,” Natasha says suddenly.

“What?” Laura has been taking a pillow and fluffing it over and over again, picking it up and pulling at the edges and then putting it down again. It’s a cycle Natasha almost finds calming, and she keeps focusing on her movements as she talks.

“You couldn’t know any of what I was dealing with when I first met you.” Natasha swallows. “My nightmares, my past, my triggers...how could you know? You didn’t live my life. But you did the best you could.”

Laura smiles and puts down the pillow. “It wasn’t easy sometimes,” she says, a hint of sadness coloring her voice. “But I tried my best. You weren’t as hard to read as you thought, Nat.”

Natasha bites down on her lower lip. “But you were better than this,” she says, gesturing to herself. “I don’t know what to do that could begin to help you. I just know what Clint and I went through while you were gone.”

Laura’s eyes drop at that, her body losing its rigid form. “I don’t really want to know about that,” she says tightly. “Not right now.”

“Okay,” Natasha agrees, still feeling more than a little lost. “What do you want, Laura?”

Laura looks around the room, as if she’s trying to familiarize herself with the world she’s always known -- the one she created, curated, and kept safe.

“Dinner,” she says finally when she meets Natasha’s eyes again. “Or some sort of family meal. Something where we can sit down together. Can we have that tonight? Or later?”

Natasha has seen herself in Laura more than once, even if she never thought she would. But over the years, she’s realized that not only does love have a way of being strange, it also has a way of being comforting. While Natasha had never seen herself in the things she loved about Laura -- her domestic lifestyle, her easygoing manner, her selfless mindset -- she had seen herself in Laura in other ways. When Clint had been hurt and she didn’t know if it was going to be a bad recovery, when Lila or Cooper or Nathaniel had done something to make their parents proud (or done something to make them worry), when their family had been threatened. Natasha inhales deeply, trying to breathe past her hurt; she sees herself in Laura now, the woman who is trying so hard to keep normalcy in her life for the sake of everyone around her, even if she might be screaming inside.

“Yes,” Natasha says, stepping forward and hugging her tightly. “Of course we can.”

 

***

 

Dinner that night is strange and happy at the same time.

Clint’s heart yo-yos between happiness and worry; he’s still so confused as to how he’s got his family back but he’s also is relieved that nothing seems to be entirely out of the ordinary. He had been worried about Cooper and Lila; worried about _what_ he didn’t know -- for all he knew, they hadn’t even experienced anything as terrible as what he was imagining. But aside from being quieter than usual, neither one of his children seemed too out of sorts.

Laura had held Nathaniel for a long time when she had finally walked upstairs, trembling hands picking up the chubby baby and holding him to her chest. Clint had held his breath, worried that Nathaniel would cry or pull away or do something instinctive that would make Laura upset about her own child not recognizing her. But there was only a slight moment of hesitation while Nate looked more confused than usual, before Laura murmured something quietly that made him giggle and snuggle into Laura’s arms. Clint had left them alone after that, feeling like he shouldn’t intrude on the moment. He had seen Natasha talking to Cooper and Lila and gone back downstairs in a fog.

Laura’s return was, almost laughably, a mirror of her disappearance. One minute he was preparing to strip Nate for a bath, testing the water with his fingers while trying not to dwell on his emotions, and then next moment he was fighting through pain from a sound that was abnormally agonizing, yanking out his aids before he dropped his son altogether. When he had finally gotten his aids back in and recovered enough to clear his head, the first thing he had heard was the sound of movement downstairs. He had emerged from the bathroom and walked into the living room tensely, holding a half-naked toddler in one arm, almost dropping his son again when he saw Lila, Laura, and Cooper sitting on the couch, all looking confused and dazed.

He hadn’t known who to hug first. He’d beelined to Cooper and then grabbed Lila, holding each of his children for a long time while pinching the inside of his own scarred arm, trying to make sure this was all real. When he finally let them go, he had turned immediately to Laura, wrapping his arms around her body.

And she was real. Real and whole and warm, smelling of the same rose-scented body wash she always wears from Bath and Body Works, as if she had woken up that morning and never left the house. He didn’t speak and the way Laura’s fingers tightened around his frame told him all that he needed to know -- _I was scared, I’m home now, I need you_.

He realized belatedly that he needed to call Natasha, but of course Natasha wasn’t answering her phone for whatever reason. After trying at least three times, he gave up and turned his focus to Laura -- Natasha could deal with this when she got home, but he needed to be with Laura for now.

“The house looks good.”

Clint looks up, cracking a smile as he twirls spaghetti onto his fork. “Oh. Yeah, well. There’s --” He stops, realizing that he’s about to say there was no one around to mess it up, and how stupid and terrible that sounds. “There’s only so much you can do when you’re trying to kill time,” he amends. Laura nods and goes back to eating.

Natasha clears her throat quietly. “How does everyone feel about ice cream tonight?”

Lila immediately bounces in her seat, her eyes wide. “Ice cream _now_?”

“For dessert,” Natasha clarifies. “If you want.” She looks over at Cooper, who nods with a small smile.

“We get ice cream!” Lila repeats happily, and suddenly she’s eating her dinner with a lot more vigor.

Clint manages to hold it together through Laura’s quiet comments, Natasha’s attempts at conversation, and Cooper’s slow eating. When Laura gets up to take some of the dishes, he jumps up almost immediately.

“I can help,” he offers, grabbing empty plates.

“And I can handle washing dishes, Clint,” Laura reminds him with a little bit of a bite.

“Right.” Clint puts the dishes back on the table and holds up his hands. “Course. Just trying to make things a little easier, that’s all.”

He’s aware of Natasha’s eyes on him and starts clenching his fingers, making fists and releasing them to keep himself calm as he lowers himself back to the chair.

“Clint,” Natasha says quietly but firmly. He looks up and sees her motioning for him to follow her into the living room.

“Yeah.” He glances at his family -- Laura still doing the dishes, Lila sitting on the floor of the kitchen petting Lucky, Cooper still helping himself to more pasta on the only bowl that has yet to be cleaned -- and gets up to follow her. Natasha doesn’t stop when she gets out of the kitchen -- she keeps walking until she’s made her way up the stairs. Clint doesn’t even ask where she’s going or what she’s doing, because he’s learned by now that he’s not going to get an answer. At least, not one that he likes.

“I’ll make some calls,” Natasha says when they’re in the safety of the bathroom and she’s locked the door behind her. “Steve should know something.”

Clint shakes his head; the motion happens before he can think about it fully but when he speaks, he knows it’s been an instinctive confirmation. “I don’t want to know.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“Yes.” Clint pauses and then turns around, bracing himself on the edges of the sink. “Nat, I don’t want to know if someone messed with time and space, or if someone killed Thanos, or if we got a do-over. I don’t want to know if this is too good to be true or some dream that I’m going to wake up from. I just want to be happy with this, okay? We’ve got her back...we’ve got _them_ back, and --”

“Okay,” Natasha says, cutting him off. She places a hand on his arm and he realizes he’s shaking. “We don’t have to know, if that’s what you want.”

Part of him is surprised she’s dropped it so easily, but he knows there has to be an ultimatum coming. Sure enough --

“But we need to take this slow.”

“Take this slow. Take this _slow_?” Clint’s head snaps up. “This isn’t a fucking mission, Natasha! This is Laura! These are my children! This is my family! _Our_ family!”

“I know,” Natasha snaps back. “I -- you think I don’t _know_ , Clint?”

He swallows, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. His body is too rigid, his breathing is too fast, and he knows all this but he can’t seem to calm himself down. Natasha places her hand on his back, rubbing gently, the way she’s done so many times -- the way Laura’s done for him so many times. Eventually, he feels himself start to relax.

“What if we lose her again?”

“Stop,” Natasha whispers, putting her head against his spine. “We’re not going to lose her again.”

“You can’t promise that,” Clint says, turning around. “I swore to protect them and they disappeared in front of me. It was out of my control.” He glances to the door, where he’s heard the faint tapping of feet against the stairs, signaling someone is coming to look for them. “How do we know we can get through this?”

Natasha wraps her hands around his waist and presses her head to his back. “Because we’ve got all of us here now,” she says softly. “And that makes us that much stronger, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your continued comments, kudos, and support - I appreciate it so much!


	10. Chapter 10

**2018: THEN**

 

It’s not so rare that Clint’s up before Laura is -- not anymore, not since he’s been fully home. But is it rare that he walks into the room while she’s still in bed with her daughter, who is usually a bundle of morning energy ready to unleash herself on the world and not one to sit quietly while her parents try to get up and find energy to deal with the world.

“What’s the occasion?”

Clint smiles, crawling into bed. “No occasion. Nate’s sleeping, Coop’s reading, and Lila wanted some time with mommy, so I decided we could have a little Saturday morning relaxation, yeah?”

“Yeah!” Lila agrees, snuggling up with her mom. Laura smiles and leans over to kiss her.

“Fair enough. But Lila baby, this does _not_ get you out of walking the dog later, okay?”

“Mmmm k,” she answers complacently, putting her head on Laura’s chest and sticking her thumb in her mouth. “Mommy, when’s Auntie Nat coming?”

“Soon,” Laura answers, sharing a glance with Clint. Lila nods at her answer and takes her thumb out of her mouth.

“Mommy, why does daddy smell bad?”

Laura bites down on a laugh, knowing part of the reason Clint had been up early was because Lucky had thrown up randomly on the kitchen floor.

“Because he’s silly,” she says, winking at Clint, who reaches over and starts to tickle her. Lila laughs loudly, her giggles turning into shrieks, and the bed becomes a pile of flailing legs before Lila wiggles out of their grasp and jumps off the bed. For a split second, Laura’s life flashes in front of her, until she lands on the soft rug Clint had put in only a few weeks ago.

“No one can find me!” Lila yells as she bolts out of the room, flinging open the door and dashing into the hallway.

“This child is going to kill me,” Laura mutters as she starts to get up, not so much content to play along with her daughter as she is to make sure she’s not going to fling herself over the baby gate and down the stairs. Clint’s arm circles around her, pulling her back before she can move, and when she turns her head, he’s grinning mischievously.

“Well, she’s crazy but she had the right idea,” he teases as he leans over to kiss her. Laura lets herself kiss him back for five seconds before she pulls away.

“Clint, we need to get up.”

“ _Or_ we could stay here, because it’s been ages since we’ve had actual morning sex,” Clint counters with a lazy grin, one that Laura has to admit is both hot and annoying at the same time.

“She’s going to tear the house apart,” Laura protests, her mind racing with ten different outcomes that involve bad situations.

“No more than Cooper did when he was her age.”

“Clint --”

“Laura, I just want sex. Okay?”

Laura can’t help but smile as Clint leans over to kiss her again, his fingers tracing her stomach and dipping under the waistband of her pajama pants. She rolls over on top of him, grinning into his mouth as he deepens the kiss, realizing that she _has_ missed this. She’d honestly been too stressed and busy to think about being intimate, and sex was something that had taken a deep backseat to children and jobs and work and Natasha’s travels.

“Who’s having an orgy and didn’t tell me?”

Laura breaks the kiss instantly, rolling back and falling off Clint’s chest as Clint shifts in surprise at the voice.

“ _Jesus_ , can you stop doing that?”

“Mmmm.” Natasha shrugs. “No. But there’s Dunkin’ Donuts coffee downstairs for you and some egg sandwiches. I mean, if you haven’t eaten enough already.”

“Oh fuck you,” Clint mutters with a glare. “We didn’t even get that far. How did you get in here?”

“Uh.” Natasha arches an eyebrow in a perfect half moon. “The door? With my key? Also, because I kind of live here, unless something has changed while I’ve been gone?”

“What I think he means,” Laura interjects, only a little annoyed about being interrupted even though she hadn’t even wanted sex at first, “is how did you get up here without anyone aka my daughter noticing and alerting us?”

“Maybe she didn’t like the hair,” Clint says. “I still hate it.”

“Maybe because I walked in and found her in the hallway and told her I was going to surprise you, and she should be quiet,” Natasha answers smugly. “Also, for the record, I could care less about what you think about my hair. I care more about not being noticed and shot at when I’m out in the world.”

“You two really are made for each other,” Clint says, staring up at the ceiling. “How was...wherever you were now?”

“Syria?” Natasha shrugs. “Fine. Hot. Boring, honestly. Arms dealers that we basically took care of in five seconds.”

“Arms dealers, huh?” Clint turns over and frowns. “You’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

Natasha sighs. “Chitauri equipment is showing up in various countries,” she says, folding her arms across her chest. “We think underground crime groups are selling it for weaponry purposes.”

“Great,” Clint says as Laura sits up, running a hand through her hair.

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Only if it gets caught in the wrong hands,” Natasha answers smoothly. “And if you think that’s going to happen when the Black Widow is on the job, you’re sorely mistaken.” 

Laura gives her what she knows is a pained look. "That doesn't make it any easier, Nat."

"Okay, well, how about this?" Natasha lowers herself to the bed, perching on the edge of the covers. "You know all the stuff that happened in Wakanda, right?"

Laura nods along with Clint, because she's seen all the news reports -- it had been hard to ignore them, especially when she already knew about Wakanda from years ago when Clint had been taken there after escaping from the Raft. Cooper had even done a school report on the country.

"Okay. Well, look...if things ever really go south...go to Wakanda. I promise you'll be safe there."

Laura still feels a little uncertain about the casualness in which Natasha is talking about dangerous things like Chitauri weapons and people coming for her family, but seeing her smile makes her smile back.

"Anyway," Natasha continues brusquely. “I’ll go back downstairs and see the kids if you guys want to finish up in here.”

“Are you kidding?” Laura asks, her voice rising in surprise. “You think we _don’t_ want you in our bed? Who died and replaced you, Natasha?” She holds out her hand as Clint helps tug her own onto the covers.

“I don't know. I thought --” Natasha stops as Laura’s hand tangles itself in blonde strands, her fingers scraping against her scalp comfortingly. “I thought maybe you were still mad at me for going away so much.”

“What?” Clint asks as Laura finds her eyes, which she’s surprised to find are filled with a uncharacteristic amount of self-doubt.

“Natasha, we’re sad you’re not here all the time, but it’s been almost two years already,” Laura says softly. “I’m not mad. At least, not mad enough to kick you out of bed. It’s not easy, and it’s not what I know we want, but I understand. I understand this is how it has to be. We both do. After all we’ve been through, why would you think this one thing would make us love you any less?”

Natasha shrugs, and Laura sees the uncertainty still dancing in the vulnerable spaces that she can’t hide along her face. Not knowing what else to say and wanting to make sure she takes advantage of the moment since three kids and a dog meant that there was never any guarantee of quiet time for longer than five seconds, she leans over to kiss her as Clint begins cuddling her from the other side.

“You know,” Clint says conversationally, “five minutes ago Laura didn’t even want to have sex because she was convinced we had to worry about Lila killing herself. All of a sudden, you show up and it’s game on. Even when there’s coffee and egg sandwiches waiting downstairs.”

“What can I say?” Natasha asks, and Laura notices her voice sounds lighter than it did a few minutes ago. “You miss me when I’m not around.”

 

***

 

Clint’s about to head out to the barn, intent on continuing his work of fixing up the old tractor, but Laura corners him as he gets to the door.

“I need you.”

“For _what_?” Clint asks, trying not to whine, because he knows after over fifteen years of marriage that whining is not a good look. “It’s my day to work!”

“It’s also your day to be a dad,” Laura reminds him.

Clint groans. “That’s _every_ day, Laur.”

“Well, get used to it.” She pauses, folding her arms. “Clint, Cooper’s giving me attitude about going to therapy.”

“He’s a teenage boy,” Clint says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “He’s going to give you attitude about everything. Last night he gave me attitude about my hair.”

“Well, your hair is a topic I might agree with him on,” Laura says, eyeing the mess of brown-blonde that’s grossly overdue for a cut. “But I’ve had it. I’m enlisting his dad to talk sense into him.”

“Right. You think _I’m_ going to be any better?” Clint asks with an eyebrow raise. “I think the moral of having a teenager is that you lose no matter _what_ because you’re a dumb parent.”

“Clint, please.” Laura rubs her forehead. “I really don’t want to cancel on her last minute.”

Clint debates arguing more, knowing there’s no way he’ll actually win, and heaves out a sigh. “Fine,” he relents, tossing a forlorn glance to his gloves and work boots, which are lying patiently by the door. “But you owe me.”

“ _I_ owe _you_?” Laura asks in surprise as Clint turns away. He can’t see her face, but he figures he’s not going to get anything fun later based on the tone of her voice.

He at least doesn’t have to look hard to find Cooper, who he spies lying in the grass as he walks into the kitchen peers out the windows that face the big backyard. He opens the back door and wanders outside; Cooper’s holding a book in front of his face but Clint knows he can sense him coming and so he’s careful about being gentle about his approach.

“Hey,” he says casually, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Whatcha reading?”

Cooper doesn’t look up from his book. “The new book mom got me for my birthday.”

“Oh.” Clint furrows his brow and shields his eyes as he looks down at his son. “You haven’t read it yet? I thought that would be first in line.”

“Nope,” Cooper says, still noncommittal in his response. Clint crouches down next to him.

“You wanna come get ready for therapy? I gotta run a few errands in town, but I can take you with me. ”

“Nah,” Cooper says. “I hate it.”

“What do you mean?” Clint asks, sitting down next to him in the grass and folding his legs up. “You like your therapist.”

“No, I don’t,” Cooper says. “She’s boring.”

Clint bites down on his lip, watching his son’s eyes travel over the words on the page. He’s momentarily distracted as he marvels at how quickly the pages turn; it’s never lost on him how his kids have grown up reading and how much it’s benefited them.

“Coop. Do you not want to go to therapy because you’re afraid to talk about something? Or because you don’t _want_ to talk about something?”

Cooper shrugs, and Clint puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, look. I’m not going to be mad at whatever you tell me. I promise.”

Cooper looks up at that, meeting his eyes, but still doesn’t speak. Clint resolves to let him sit in silence for as long as he needs to, knowing that the last thing he’s going to do is be pushy, regardless of the timing. If Cooper missed his appointment entirely, well, he’d deal with Laura’s anger.

“I don’t know, dad,” Cooper says slowly. “I’m worried about everything. I heard about stuff happening in Wakanda -- it was on the news. And that Spider-Man kid, he’s still out there. Nat’s away a lot and I never know how dangerous it is, because you _still_ won’t tell me. Everyone in school worries about tests and stuff, but, like...what’s the point? What’s the point of doing anything if all these other things exist?”

Clint carefully adjusts himself on the ground. “I know it’s always been hard,” he starts carefully. “And I know there’s been stuff that you’ve had to deal with that isn’t what normal kids your age have dealt with. I get it. It’s why we’ve tried to make things as normal for you as possible growing up.” He pauses. “Do you remember why we started taking you to therapy?”

Cooper makes a face. “Because I was making mistakes.”

“Because you needed to put your anger and confusion somewhere,” Clint corrects gently. “Somewhere that wasn’t me or mom or Natasha or the kid at school who was bothering you. And I wanted you to have somewhere where you go could and yell and talk about your feelings in a safe space, because I thought taking care of those emotions would help you have more of that normal life.”

“But it’s just still me,” Cooper says cynically. “It’s not like _other_ people go to therapy.”

“Not true,” Clint says before he can stop himself. “Natasha did. And mom did.”

Cooper eyes his father skeptically. “ _You_ didn’t.”

Clint sighs. “No,” he admits. “I didn’t. But I should have. And it wasn’t for lack of trying, Coop. Nat and mom weren’t exactly happy with me.”

“So then why won’t you let me be you?” Cooper asks bluntly. “Come on, dad. If _you_ don’t need it, then _I_ don’t need it.”

“That’s a very Natasha way to approach an argument,” Clint points out, hoping he can possibly get at least one small smile out of his son. Cooper, however, remains stoic.

“Dad.”

“Coop.” Clint fights to keep his voice from falling off the divide between angry and supportive. “What have I told you from the first day you were old enough to talk? What have I _always_ told you? We don’t quit.”

Cooper rolls his eyes. “That’s dumb, dad. _You_ quit. You’re not doing your job anymore.”

“I quit because I was forced to quit,” Clint replies patiently, picking up on the beginning of a tell-tale teenage whine. “That’s different. If I could still be an Avenger, I would.”

Clint expects another pushback, but instead, Cooper meets his eyes with a look that Clint notices has traded defiance for distinct sadness.

“You would?”

Clint cringes as soon as he realizes what he’s said and how it’s probably been taken, silently kicking himself. “Oh, buddy.” He puts an arm around Cooper and hugs him tightly, not caring if his son doesn’t want the affection. “I didn’t mean it like that. I wouldn’t go back to you leave again. I don’t want to do that to you. I’d go back to my job to help people, like Natasha is doing.”

Cooper looks down at the ground, and Clint counts it as a win that he doesn’t wrench away from his dad’s hold. “You like helping people. You named Nate after Wanda’s brother.”

“Yeah,” Clint says with a small smile. “I did. Well, we did.” He stops and takes in the silence, taking in the slightly chilly afternoon and the crisp wind, the sound of the wind slicing through the chimes hanging on the back porch, the quietness of the farm that felt serene and alive all at the same time. “Look, Coop. We told you that if you ever wanted to stop doing something, you could stop. We’ll allow you that, because we don’t want you to do something you don’t like. But --”

“But I don’t get to stop doing something just because it’s hard,” Cooper finishes sullenly.

Exactly.”

Cooper looks over his shoulder at the house and then back at Clint. “Has mom yelled at you yet?”

Clint huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, kiddo. She has. It’s okay, though. I think I can handle your mom yelling at me. You want me to tell her that I’ll take you to therapy today?”

Cooper looks less than enthused at the idea of fulfilling his dad’s wishes after all, but he nods slowly and gets up. Clint rises with him, watching him as he walks back to the house. An emotion swells up inside him, one that he can’t quantify but one that threatens to pour itself into every inch of his body, and he suddenly knows he’s never been more content to just be this -- be a father, be a dad, have his family surrounding him on a quiet, imperfect farm.

“Proud of you, Coop,” he mutters as he glances up at the bright blue sky, following him back to the house.

 

**2018: NOW**

 

Natasha stays in the bedroom while Clint and Laura put their children to sleep, largely because she feels like she needs to stay out of the way with everyone back and acclimating to their normal routines. In the past, and as recent as a year or two ago, she knows she would have felt out of place and uncomfortable about her exclusion from parts of their daily lives, still uncertain of how she fit into a family that was well-formed before she serendipitously found herself a part of it. Now, she’s surprised to realize she feels content staying in bed by herself, taking advantage of the space for the moment, nestled under the covers with a book and a mug of tea on the bedside table.

When Clint and Laura walk back into the room after what feels like hours later, having gotten themselves ready for bed and looking sufficiently tired, she’s almost fallen asleep herself but manages to wake up enough to make sure there’s enough room in the big bed and put her book on the nightstand to prevent it from falling on the floor in the middle of the night. She dozes off quickly after Clint has cuddled up beside her, his strong legs warm against her own, and tries to comfort herself with the fact that things might finally be able to return to normal, even if they’d obviously have to deal with the repercussions of Thanos’ snap at some point.

She doesn’t know what time it is when she wakes up again, because she’s thrown out of sleep by Clint moving around abruptly in bed and sharp, frenzied talking. She sits up quickly, suddenly wide awake when she realizes Clint is holding Laura on the other side of him, talking to her in the dark room.

“Hey, hey. It’s fine, okay? It’s fine.” He reaches up and drags a hand over her hair gently, pulling her closer. “You’re fine, okay?”

“Clint?” Natasha moves so she can see better in the dark, but Clint gives her a look that she can see clear as day even in the dusky room. Natasha swallows and nods, pulling her hand away; she knows more about bad dreams more than both of them combined and understands why Clint wants to keep the lights off.

“Laura?” she asks softly as Clint continues to talk. She leans over and puts a gentle hand on the blanket covering Laura’s leg, feeling the tension and shakiness of heavy breathing, the after effects of being woken abruptly.

“I’m fine,” Laura mumbles as Clint kisses her forehead. “I’m sorry -- I’m sorry I woke you up. I just forgot where I was. I got confused.”

Natasha’s heart pulses painfully, and it takes all of her willpower not to grab Laura and hug her herself. She determinedly shuts her mind off to all of the things Laura could have experienced that contributed to her nightmare and scoots closer, until she’s cuddled up against Clint and Laura.

“It’s okay,” she says, ignoring Clint’s look. “It’s okay, Laura. Do you think you can go back to sleep, or do you want to stay up?”

Laura doesn’t answer right away, and Natasha can almost see her trying to work out a decision in her head. “If someone can stay up with me for a little, I should be okay,” she says finally.

“I’ll stay up,” Clint says almost immediately. “I’ll make sure the kids are okay, too.”

Natasha gives up, knowing that she’s not going to get Clint out of his protective state of mind anytime soon, and resigns herself to at least being able to cuddle both of them by adjusting her position. She doesn’t remember falling asleep but when she wakes up, she’s alone in bed again, and judging by the sunlight streaming through the window, it’s later than she would normally let herself sleep. Natasha rolls over sleepily, coming into contact with a wet, panting face. She’s too lazy to move, so she lets Lucky lick the side of her head and tug at the covers.

“Someone should really walk you,” she groans, pushing the dog’s nose away from her face until he wanders out of the room, clearly having gotten the message. She eventually gets up and changes into sweatpants and one of Clint’s flannel shirts, pulling it on over her tank top, but when she gets to the stop of the stairs, she pauses. She can hear commotion in the kitchen; Cooper’s loud voice and LIla’s shrieking laughter, the smell of coffee complementing the sounds and wafting through the house in waves. As much as she wants to immerse herself in something comforting after days of feeling like the house was too empty and lonely, she finds herself walking into the bathroom. Locking the door behind her, she starts rooting through the cupboard until she finds the boxes of red dye Laura had started keeping in the house years ago.

A few hours later, Natasha stands in front of the bathroom mirror, holding her breath as she unwraps the towel from her hair. Red dye splatters the sink and dots the floor, sticky crimson blotting the towel and Clint’s flannel, which makes the whole space look like it’s the casualty of a mission gone bad.

But her hair is red again -- at least, a lighter shade of red -- and for that, Natasha feels thankful. She’d known from the moment she’d woken up that she needed to ditch the blonde; she should have done it days ago and it was purely due to laziness that she hadn’t. For whatever reason, Laura’s nightmare had spurred something inside of her, a desperate push to return to what their lives had been for so many years.

“Hey.” There’s two quick knocks, and she hears Clint’s voice on the other side of the door. “You decent?”

She sighs, knowing he has to have either Cooper or Lila with him, otherwise he would’ve just walked right in. “Yes.”

Clint jiggles the knob and when he opens the door, Natasha’s surprised to find Clint alone. They lock eyes instantly and she sees the look of surprise followed by relief when he realizes what color her hair is.

“Why’d you knock?” she asks as he walks into the bathroom.

Clint shrugs. “You didn’t come down for breakfast and we weren’t sure whether you were still sleeping or if you were upset for some reason or if you just decided to disappear again for kicks.” He motions to her hair, looking her up and down. “Thank god.”

Natasha rolls her eyes at the ceiling. “The blonde wasn’t that bad.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He leans back against the wall and Natasha shakes her hair out again, combing her fingers through wet auburn locks. It’s been ages since she’d actually kept it a decent length, and now that it’s growing long again, she’s finding she doesn’t mind it.

“How is she?”

“Fine.” Clint shakes his head, leaning against the wall. “I mean, seriously, she’s fine. It’s as if nothing happened last night or ever, and I know that’s not true.” He clenches his jaw. “I can _see_ it.”

“You can’t make her talk,” Natasha reminds him gently, turning away from the mirror. “I know how it feels, Clint. I know how frustrating it is. I know you want her to talk --”

“She had a fucking nightmare that was clearly upsetting her, that was clearly about something that happened, and she won’t talk about anything!” Clint snaps, starting to pace the length of the bathroom. “She scared the shit out of me, Nat! I can’t just ignore that!”

Natasha rubs her eyes, smearing water and dye across her face. “Laura’s like us, Clint. If she doesn’t want to talk, she’s not going to. We can’t force her.”

Clint throws up his hands in frustration. “Well, I can’t keep going on like nothing’s wrong! I was _alone_ , and they were _gone_!”

“But they don’t see it that way,” Natasha replies, trying to keep her tone calm. “They see it as something that maybe happened for five seconds, even if it was weird and scary. It’s _not_ what you and I experienced.”

“I know, but --” He stops, and Natasha can see him trying to compose himself. “What if something happened, Nat? What if they’re changed and I don’t even know it? Maybe that’s why she had that nightmare last night, maybe something’s changed or there was something she went through that she can’t even talk about. I should be there to talk her through it. What if they don’t --”

“Clint, stop and listen to me.” She reaches up and catches his hand as he walks by her for the umpteenth time, causing him to still. When he’s stopped moving, carefully turns him towards her, moving her hands to her shoulders so she can grip him steadily.

“Where is Laura now?”

Clint breathes out slowly. “She’s reading. I brought Cooper and Lila over to Hannah’s house. I don’t even know if that’s the best place for them, but, I mean, they didn’t disappear, so at least they can’t talk about it?”

Natasha squeezes his hand. “Then why don’t you use the time you have now and go talk to her? I know you’re scared and you want to give her space, but you’ll also makes it worse if you just ignore her.” She nods towards the door encouragingly. “And anyway, I still need to finish up in here so that when the kids come home, they don’t think someone died in their bathroom.”

Clint manages to smile, but Natasha can tell he's still somewhat unsettled. She decides not to push it, going back to cleaning up the sink.

"Nat. If Laura's back, that means...everyone else is, right?"

Natasha's breath catches in her throat, because with Laura and Cooper and Lila's re-appearance, she's honestly forgotten that there were other people who had been affected by the snap. Whether conscious or not, she hadn't stopped for a second to think about anyone else or if anyone else was dealing with what they were dealing with. And she doesn't have to guess who Clint is referring to, despite the vagueness of his question.

"I don't know," she admits softly to the sink. "I want to say yes. But we have no idea what happened. It was your decision not to find out." She turns around to find Clint staring at the ground and reaches for his hand again. "If this is about Wanda, you can't beat yourself up over that, either. You know that wasn't your fault."

The look that Clint gives her confirms what she'd suspected, and she watches as he lets his face morph into a picture of misery. "I don't even know if she's alive. And what if she's all alone? I don't know if she still has Vision. I can't just leave her out there and forget about her. But I don't even know where she'd be. I mean, I guess she'd be in Wakanda, but --"

"One step at a time," Natasha cautions firmly. "Your focus right now is Laura, and making sure things are okay. Figure things out now with her, and once you feel okay, then we can figure out how you can help Wanda. I _need_ you to trust my judgement on this, Clint, or we're never going to get back to what we were."

Clint nods reluctantly and Natasha kisses him on the cheek. “You know I’m right,” she continues, rubbing stray dye from his face. “And I’m half of your wife, so I’m at least _half_ right.”

“You are,” Clint relents, some of the frustration clearly having bled out of him. He reaches for the door, glancing over his shoulder as he does so.

“I do like the red, you know. I always have. We both always have.”

Natasha smiles and fingers the still-wet strands. “I know,” she replies as he exits the bathroom. She lets out a small sigh before she turns back to the sink.

 

***

 

Clint gets downstairs to find Laura nestled into the left side of the couch in the sun room, her feet tucked under her legs, her head resting against one arm. With her dark hair falling across her eyes and the easy way she smiles when she reads something she obviously enjoys, he finds himself distracted, cataloging her every move, getting lost in the familiarity that he’s become so accustomed to over the years. After a few moments, he clears his throat quietly causing Laura to look up.

“Busy?”

“No,” Laura says, nodding to the couch. “Just reading. You can come sit if you want.”

Clint walks further into the room, settling down by her legs, and makes himself comfortable as he puts an arm around her.

“If you’re not busy, maybe we can talk.”

“About what?” Laura asks lightly.

Clint swallows. “I, uh. I thought maybe you wanted to talk about your nightmare.”

Laura’s finger stills where it’s been tracing circles on a page of the book. “No,” she says quietly, turning a page. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry I woke everyone up, though.”

Clint shakes his head. “No, don’t be sorry. I just...I know you helped Natasha talk about her nightmares when she had them, and you helped me, and I just thought --”

“I don’t want to talk about it, okay Clint?”

Her voice is so insistent, the rest of the words die in his throat. He looks around the room, trying not to let the awkward silence stretch for too long.

“You know what this reminds me of?”

“Hmm?” Laura turns another page in her book.

“The apartment we rented together before we got the house. Remember how we’d sit around and read together?”

Laura looks up and smiles. “I remember how mad I got at you for taking up too much space in the bed.”

Clint smiles back, cuddling up against her more. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I just…” He pauses, trying to collect his thoughts. “Laura, being without you was hard. Losing you was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. And I know I’m being overbearing and maybe I’m trying too hard to fix things, but…” He trails off, unsure of how to finish his sentence. Laura sighs and puts her finger in between the pages of her book, closing it on her pointer.

“I wish I could do something to help,” she starts quietly. “But I don’t even know what happened, Clint. And that’s -- that’s _hard_ for me to meet in the middle on. I know that you said something terrible happened. And I _know_ something terrible happened -- I remember how it felt when I started to...I guess...disappear.” She shudders, as if what she’s remembering is chilling in more ways than one, and Clint fights to keep himself from showing emotion. “But I don’t know how to make it better when I don’t know the whole equation.”

“I know,” Clint admits. “That’s why I wanted to know if we could talk. I need to know --”

“Clint.” Laura slides her finger out of the book, letting it fall to the floor as she turns to meet his eyes, and he knows he’s not doing as good a job of hiding his vulnerability as he thinks he is. “Clint, what?”

He takes a deep breath, holding it for a moment before he exhales. “Nothing’s changed, right? I mean, you still...you still love me?”

Laura blinks in surprise, and her face softens as she reaches for his hand. “Oh, Clint.” She leans over to kiss him, her lips settling gently on his own. “Of course I love you. I love you, and I love Natasha...I love Cooper and Lila and Nate. I love you even though you’ve done things to piss me off during our marriage. But I have _always_ loved you. That hasn’t changed.”

“And you’re not mad because...because I didn’t do enough?”

Laura frowns. “What do you mean?”

Clint drops his eyes, focusing on the floor, at the way the light from the windows falls shapelessly across the tiles. “I failed, Laura. I quit avenging to keep you safe, to keep our family safe. I didn’t even go see Wanda because I was trying so hard to protect us! And then you just disappeared in front of me. You and Lila and Cooper...my whole family...I couldn’t keep you safe and I couldn’t figure out how to bring you back, and it’s all my fault.”

“Clint…” Laura’s voice vibrates, and Clint sees her trying to hold back tears. “Is that what you think? That I’d be mad at you because you didn’t try hard enough to save me?”

“I didn’t!” Clint bursts out loudly, belatedly realizing he’s glad all but one child is home. “You were gone and I...I lost it and then spent too much time being upset with Natasha and I didn’t even know how to start doing anything that would help. I wasn’t doing anything to help you! How can you be _okay_ with that?”

Laura leans back against the couch, smiling sadly. “You asked me before if anything has changed. Do you know how I know that nothing’s changed?”

“How?” Clint asks irritably, his anger still hot and bright despite the fact that Laura keeps smiling.

“The fact that you’re still the same Clint that I’ve known all my life. The person who thinks they’re never going to be enough even though they _are_. Even though they’ve done so much for me. For our family. For Natasha.” She entwines their fingers together. “Clint, I still don’t know what happened but I know that whatever _did_ happen was out of your control. And I know you’re going to be upset about how you reacted to it, no matter how involved you were -- don’t you know how well I know you by now?”

Clint wrenches his hand away. “It doesn’t matter. I should’ve tried harder.”

Laura purses her lips and Clint can tell she’s considering his words. “Would it make you feel better if I told you that yes, you should have done something?”

“No!” Clint responds angrily. “That just makes me feel worse!”

“Then I’m not sure what you want me to say,” Laura continues, shifting her position so that she’s facing him fully. “Clint, in all our years of marriage, you have been nothing but a good husband. You’ve been dumb and you’ve made mistakes and I’ve wanted to kill you sometimes, but nothing you’ve done would eve make me think you didn’t love me. And this is no exception.”

Laura kisses him again and for some reason, even though he’s held and her talked to her and cuddled her since she’s been back, it’s _this_ that makes everything seem real. He kisses her back lets her snuggle him intimately, feeling the warmth of her body against his own.

“It’s okay, you know,” he says after a moment. “If you’re scared and if you have nightmares. I don’t want you to talk about anything you can’t talk about, but I do want to be there for you. I want to know you’re okay. I want to help you if you’re not.”

Laura traces a finger over his lips. “I do want to try to talk,” she says. “But I need some time. We’ve gotten through things like this before, and we can do it again, but what I need right now is for you to be there for me -- you and Natasha.”

Clint blinks, feeling a tear slip down his cheek. “How many times when we were first dating did I tell you that I didn’t deserve you?”

“A lot,” Laura says, brushing a stray tear away. “But I still like hearing it. It reminds me of why I always come home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like all I've done in the past few months is apologize for taking so long to update a chapter. (Look, in my defense, I wrote a book!) But we're finally in the "end game" - the last chapter is going to be more of a longer present day epilogue, so prepare yourself for feelings as I bring everything together. <3
> 
> Truly, deeply, thank you to everyone who continues to read and comment - your love for this story, this family, and this OT3 is what keeps me going and I appreciate you so much!


	11. Chapter 11

Clint’s reading on the porch when Natasha walks outside, opening the door slowly.

“Clint.”

He lifts his head; the sweet smell of what he recognizes as beef stew is wafting out of the open space between the door and the lawn. “What?”

Natasha hesitates and hands him his cell phone. Clint frowns at the way she’s holding it and also at the way she’s looking at him, as if she’s afraid to tell him something. “It’s for you.”

He wants to ask the obvious question, but before he can, Natasha disappears back into the house. The lingering smell of stew hangs in the air even after the door closes and there’s a faint bark from somewhere in the back of the house, but he barely notices once the voice on the other end of the phone speaks.

“Hi.”

Clint’s been leaning back in the porch chair with his book balanced against his legs, and he almost falls over when she speaks. He struggles to keep himself upright and re-orient himself as he searches for his voice.

“I -- Wanda?”

“Hi,” Wanda repeats softly, and suddenly Clint doesn’t know what to say.

His first instinct is to apologize -- to say he’s sorry for not being there, that he’s sorry for not doing more to protect her, that he’s sorry for not calling more, that he’s sorry for sitting around like some sorry pathetic mess. But he can’t make the words come out, so he decides to keep it simple instead.

“How are you?”

He hears Wanda exhale slowly on the other end of the phone, as if she’s trying to decide what to say back. “Okay,” she says finally. “I wanted to call earlier, but I needed some time.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, reaching up with one hand and rubbing his eyes. “Time. How long did -- I mean, are you okay?”

“I think so,” Wanda says carefully, and then the words are spilling out almost too fast. “Clint, I know that you know what happened. Please don’t blame yourself, there’s nothing you could have done --”

“Jesus, Wanda! Stop telling me there’s nothing I could’ve done! I know I wasn’t in Wakanda but I could’ve called more! I could’ve _been_ there!”

“There was nothing,” Wanda says, her voice flat and unemotional. “The fight was beyond anything we could have handled. There was nothing you could have done, Clint. _No one_ could do anything. Not me...not even Vision.”

He’s not sure whether it’s because Wanda is being so firm about it, because he trusts her since she was actually _there_ , but for the first time since everything went haywire with Thanos, he feels relieved. The people he’d been placing so much pressure on to hate him for doing everything wrong -- Laura, Natasha, Cooper, Lila, Wanda...well, if Vision couldn’t even do anything, maybe he shouldn’t feel so bad for not being around after all.

“Is Vision...”

Wanda stays silent, and any and all relief Clint’s started to feel immediately disappears. He leans forward, the open book dropping to the ground as his body hunches over, and closes his eyes.

“Shit,” he mutters under his breath. “Wanda, I’m -- I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Wanda says softly. Her voice is gentle and calm, as if she’s already told herself this very thing ten thousand times before and all she needs to do is repeat it to someone else. “I can’t look at what was taken from me -- I need to look at what I gained. What I was able to have, even if it was only for a little while. And what I had was good.”

Clint swallows hard, opening his eyes and raising his head. “Do you want to come to the farm?”

“I don’t think it’s the right time,” Wanda answers sadly. “I want to see you -- I do -- but I know what happened to your family. You need time with them before we can all move on.”

“You’ve been here before when we all needed time,” Clint reminds her, even though he knows she won’t budge on her opinion. “And it was good for you, remember?”

“That was different.”

“Yeah.” Clint suddenly feels older than normal -- more tired, more aged, more run-down. “Yeah, it was.”

“I just...I had to call and see if you were okay. If they were okay.”

Clint tries to smile at the phone. “Laura won’t talk much, but she seems to be dealing. Cooper is...well, he’s a teenage boy and I can’t figure out what’s going on because he could be pissed about what happened or he could just be pissed in general. Lila seems fine, but I’m worried one day she won’t be. Do you know how it happened? How everyone came back?”

“Yes,” Wanda says. “And you know you don’t need to know.”

 _I know_ , he thinks. He doesn’t need to know, because what mattered was that his family was back and, aside from some mental shakiness, they were all relatively unharmed. Wanda was back; she had lost Vision -- he doesn’t know if he’ll ever know the extent of that and doesn’t know if he wants to -- but she was back and still remembered him and still wanted to be a part of his life.

“I’ll call more,” Wanda offers. “If that would help.”

“Yeah,” Clint says slowly. “I’d like that. Where are you now?”

“Back in Scotland.” She pauses. “I know it’s not where people would expect me to go. But I needed to be where I felt free for awhile. Where I felt like I had a home.”

Clint tries to ignore the stabbing pain in his chest. “Well, hey. If you ever want a visitor, I’m off house arrest now. I think with everything that’s gone on, jailing me for leaving home is pretty much the last thing on Ross’ mind.”

“Then I’ll wait for you to call,” Wanda says lightly. “Can you tell Laura I said hi?”

“Of course. Call me soon?”

“Like I could stay away from you,” Wanda teases. She hangs up abruptly and while Clint knows that kind of conversation ender is for the best, he drops the phone feeling uncertain, a tinge of depression clouding his brain. He hears soft throat clearing behind him and even though he knows she wouldn’t in this case, he wonders if Natasha has been spying on his conversation.

“How are you?”

“Okay,” Clint lies as she walks over and sits down next to him. He lets her take the phone from his hand and they sit together in silence, with only the wind and the occasional yells from Nathaniel permeating the air.

“You know,” Natasha starts. “I didn’t want to tell you this, because I knew it would send you into protective dad overdrive --”

“Wow, you know me so well,” Clint interrupts sarcastically, even though he can’t refute it. Natasha smiles and takes his hand.

“When Wanda and Vision were attacked by some of Thanos’ soldiers, Wanda held them off pretty well. And in the battle with Thanos, before everything happened, she was the reason we all survived. She was powerful enough to save me from almost getting killed, she was powerful enough to save our friends...it was all her, Clint. I wish you could’ve seen how much she’s grown and how much confidence she had. I wouldn’t even recognize her as the scared girl from Sokovia.”

“She’s come a long way,” Clint agrees, unable to stop the proud dad feeling from spreading through his chest. It alleviates some of the depression that’s traveled there, and he manages to smile. “I’m proud of her. She really gained a lot of confidence.”

“Because of you,” Natasha interjects. “ _You_ did that. _You_ helped with that. It’s _because_ of you that she’s so strong now.”

“She did it on her own,” Clint deflects. Natasha sighs loudly next to him.

“For fuck’s sake, stop selling yourself short, Clint. We’re years past this.”

Her knowing smile cuts through him the same way it did in their first few months together, and he laughs softly. “I know,” he concedes. “You’re right.” He hesitates, unsure if he should tell Natasha what Wanda’s told him. He realizes that because it’s Natasha, and because she’s been way more involved in seeking out information than he has, she probably already knows.

“She’ll get through it,” Natasha says in the quiet, and he knows he doesn’t have to continue. “And if she needs help, she knows who to call.”

Clint stands up, breaking their hold and shoving his hands in his pockets. “Thank god you didn’t get snapped away,” he says, staring out over the farm. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Same thing you did for years when I wasn’t around all the time with you and Laura,” Natasha says with a wink. “You’d survive, Clint. Trust me.”

“Things were easier back then,” Clint points out. Natasha shrugs as she meets his height.

“Maybe,” she says, a wistful look on her face, one that makes Clint wonder if she’s thinking of everything they’ve been through. “But we’ve learned a lot together. And we’re all stronger for it.” She squeezes his shoulder gently before she walks inside, taking the phone with her and closing the door on his thoughts.

 

***

 

By all accounts, this particular Saturday is a morning that Laura can almost classify as perfect. The air is chilly but not so chilly that stepping outside makes you feel freezing, the garden in the back has actually begun to grow small spurts of red and green thanks to a few days of constant sun and short afternoon rain, and the whole farm exudes an air of calmness that Laura thinks she hasn’t felt in a long time.

She pours her coffee slowly, taking the time to savor everything -- the smell of roasted hazelnut, the warm burn against her fingers as the caffeine fills up the ceramic mug, the (for now) merciful silence that she knows will be gone in less than a minute. Laura trains her eyes towards the ceiling, where she knows the master bedroom is, and rubs her thumb against the mug as guilt washes over her. She knows Clint’s going to keep asking her about what happened, and she wishes she had an answer she felt comfortable with. But she doesn’t, and so not talking about it had seemed like an easy way out. How else was she supposed to explain being here and then returning as if nothing had happened, when she knew _something_ had happened? Something that had been terrible for people who loved her? Physically, she felt fine. And her memories, for all intents and purposes, were intact; she had been more worried about Cooper and Lila but aside from Cooper’s general twitchiness, both of her kids had seemed okay.

So was she supposed to continue on as if nothing was wrong when she knew that _everything_ was?

“Hey,” Natasha says as she shuffles into the kitchen, stifling a yawn. “You’re up early.”

Laura shrugs as her thoughts evaporate. “I don’t know if I’d ever call six thirty in the morning _early_ , especially in this house, and especially when there's a dog to walk.” She nods towards Lucky, who is dozing on the couch in the living room.

“Well, still.” Natasha reaches past Laura for the rest of the coffee. “Not like Nate is waking up at three anymore. Even Lila sleeps til seven.”

Laura nods and Natasha’s arm circles around her waist as she takes a sip of coffee.

“Hey,” Natasha says again, kissing the side of her head, lips pressing against mussed brown hair. “Where are you this morning?”

Laura looks over and gives her a guilty look. “That obvious?”

“Well, no,” Natasha admits. “I took a guess because you were wandering around alone before anyone else was up.” She gestures towards the door. “Take a walk around the farm with me?”

Usually, Laura knows she’d make a big deal about being out of the house while any of her kids were still sleeping, but she knows Clint’s still upstairs, and she’s not actually leaving the property. She walks into the living room and trades her slippers for sneakers, putting her coffee on the tv stand as she grabs a sweatshirt. Natasha follows, walking past her, and waits patiently at the door. As she opens it, Laura realizes she’s already dressed to go outside.

“You came prepared,” she accuses. “Not fair.”

“How is being prepared for a walk unfair?” Natasha asks, linking their arms as they walk down the porch and onto the lawn. Laura immediately veers right on instinct, the path she usually takes when she walks with Cooper or Lila. She glances down at the grass and her eyes catch a thin glittering sparkle dancing in the light; her breath hitches in her throat and Natasha looks at her in concern.

“Laura?”

Laura swallows down a lump in her throat. “You took it back.”

For a moment, she can see Natasha struggling to figure out what she means, and then her eyes soften in a show of realization. “Of course I did,” Natasha says softly. “I’m home, and I always wear it when I’m home.” She slows her gait, matching Laura’s measured steps, and takes a deep breath.

“When you disappeared -- what happened to you -- I was there when everything happened. I saw people disappear. I saw them fade away as if they’d never even existed.” Natasha bites down on her lip, running her teeth over chapped skin. “To think about what happened here…Laura, my family was gone. And I knew my family was gone before Clint even came to find me. It hurt more than anything in the world.”

Laura lets the wind wrap around her body like a close-knitted shawl, shivering in its embrace. “If this is an attempt to get me to try to talk about things, you’re not going to get lucky.”

“It’s not,” Natasha promises gently. “You forget, I know better than anyone what it feels like to not want to talk about things you can’t understand. Or things you don’t want to relive.”

Laura tugs Natasha a little closer. “Thank you,” she says, and she knows the relief in her voice is palpable. “By the way, I’m glad you dyed your hair back. The blonde never really felt right. But I understand why you needed to do it.”

“I’m thinking of growing it out,” Natasha muses, shaking her head a little, letting messy waves tumble across her shoulders. “I’ve heard french braids are all the rage now -- according to Lila, anyway. But I didn’t need to be blonde anymore and I figured, well...maybe this will help me get back to figuring out who I am.”

“Natasha.” Laura stops walking as they round the corner of the farm. “Who you _are_ has never been an issue. Not even when you felt like you were confused about who you were and where you belonged. You know that.”

Natasha tries to smile, but Laura can tell the movement is somewhat forced. “You know, after everything happened, I started to think,” she says. “And it finally hit me -- why Banner bothered me.”

“Oh?” Laura asks mildly, figuring she might as well go with the change in conversation. “Why?”

Natasha purses her lips, as if she’s trying to decide what to say. “I didn’t know how to love.”

Laura turns to her in confusion and then starts walking again slowly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Natasha falls into step next to her, sighing. “I thought love was finding someone that understood the things you went through and wouldn’t judge you for them.”

“Well, I’d argue that’s definitely part of it,” Laura observes.

“But it’s not just that,” Natasha continues. “It’s seeing someone at their best and at their worst and still being there -- _really_ being there -- even when someone doesn’t want to talk. Even if someone disagrees with you. Even if they try to hurt you. Loving people isn’t about...it isn’t about what you owe someone or what someone owes you. It’s not a debt you need to reclaim.”

“No,” Laura answers. “It’s not.”

“I know,” Natasha says. “And that’s why when Banner left so suddenly, I felt so upset. Because I felt like I had given him something and he took it for granted. But love isn’t about that. Love is just about...love. I didn’t know what that meant, but I learned that from you. Well, you and Clint, but don’t tell him I’m giving you all the credit.”

Laura lets Natasha’s words sit with her as her gaze travels over the lawn and towards the back porch, where she can see movement inside the kitchen. Clint’s up, she can tell from the way the shadows are moving, and the wind chimes are performing a tiny musical choir above her.

Laura turns and kisses Natasha, letting herself take in the moment -- a moment that’s immediately broken by a small crash from inside that Laura only hears because the window is open. Startled, she pulls back and looks at Natasha quizzically; it’s possible Nathaniel is running around but otherwise, the house is too quiet for anyone else to be up.

She walks into the house via the back porch, opening the door to find Clint grumbling as he tries to pick up pieces of a shattered plate, his face a scowling mask of annoyance. In the background, Lucky is barking loudly, and Natasha immediately moves past Laura to shush him, directing him past Clint and Laura and to the backyard.

“Clint, what the hell happened?”

“Dropped the damn thing,” Clint mutters, and Laura can tell he’s more angry at himself than he probably should be. She reaches for the dustbuster by the door.

“Let me help,” she says, bending down as Natasha steps back inside, having safely let the dog out of the house. In another second, Cooper’s padded into the kitchen. He eyes the floor and looks up at the adults, shaking out his bedhead with a yawn.

“Dad, what happened?”

“Nothing,” Clint says, and Laura can tell he’s trying to control his anger so as not to set Cooper off. “Nothing, kiddo. Sorry I woke you up.”

“S’okay.” He takes a tentative step forward. “I can help --”

“ _No_ ,” Clint snaps, practically barking out the words. Cooper looks concerned and a little affronted, causing Laura to cross the floor while passing the dust buster to Natasha in one smooth move.

“Coop, go back upstairs. Your dad’s right, you shouldn’t be in here -- you could hurt yourself. We’ll clean up.”

Cooper looks like he wants to say something but he stays silent, shuffling out of the kitchen. A door slams upstairs a few seconds later, and Laura watches Clint wince.

“You didn’t have to yell, Clint. He just wanted to help.”

“I know,” Clint says heavily. “I don’t know what got into me. I just...got angry.”

Laura exchanges a glance with Natasha and Clint groans, throwing a paper towel full of large glass pieces into the trash. “Don’t give me that look. I know that look. I’m not going to fly off the fucking handle like I did years ago.”

“No one said that,” Natasha says, and Laura can tell she’s using the voice she usually brings out when she’s trying to be stern without yelling. Clint gets up and braces himself against the counter, leaning over the sink. “Yeah, I know. Sorry. Let’s just clean up and have breakfast, okay?”

Laura’s about to reach over and hug him until the sound of more feet against the hardwood floor catches her attention. “How is every kid in this house up except the one who cries the most?” Laura wonders under her breath as Natasha moves quickly, stopping Lila from entering the kitchen.

“Hey, Lila baby. Daddy had a small accident so we’re going to stay in the living room for awhile.”

“I want daddy to read to me,” Lila responds, waving a torn paperback. At her words, Clint puts down the coffee he’s picked up and walks towards his daughter.

“You _do_ , do you?”

Laura watches Clint’s entire demeanor change as he picks up Lila, pretending to dance into the living room before throwing her gently on the couch. She returns her attention to the floor, surveying the space for any remnants of glass.

“I know it’s early,” Natasha starts once they’re alone again. “But I wanted to make a call.”

“Sure,” Laura says with a small shrug. “You don’t need to ask permission, you know.”

“It’s not a call for me,” Natasha says as she picks up Clint’s forgotten coffee and takes a sip. “It’s for Cooper.”

Laura looks up in confusion. “What?”

Natasha lets out a sigh. “Clint told me Cooper was being difficult about therapy, and maybe it was related to...to whatever you guys went through. So I talked to a few people --”

“A few people,” Laura repeats, crossing her arms. “Avengers?”

“Laura, we’re barely Avengers anymore,” Natasha placates, taking another sip of coffee. “A woman named Sharon Carter. Peggy Carter’s niece.”

Laura frowns; the name is vaguely familiar mostly thanks to knowing about Peggy, but she doesn’t recall ever hearing that much about Sharon. “And?”

“And, she has some experience working with people who have had...different kinds of issues,” Natasha says carefully. “She knows SHIELD. She knows us. She knows about Steve.”

Laura stays silent, letting herself think about Natasha’s words. “And...and you think Sharon will help?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha admits. “But I know it can’t hurt.”

Laura looks back down at the floor, her eyes moving over the small pieces of glass that still need to be cleaned up.

“Does Clint know?”

“Not yet,” Natasha admits. “I wanted to see if you were okay with it first. I know how…” She trails off, biting her lip. “I know how you feel about Cooper being involved in all of this. The superhero stuff.”

Laura sighs, bending down and rescuing a rogue piece of glass from the floor. “I’m not happy with it,” she says honestly. “If it was up to me, I’d keep him out of everything. He already sees everything that goes on in the news...and he asks Clint about so much stuff. I don’t want to bring more of that into his life.” She throws the glass into the trash, double checking that she hasn’t cut herself by accident, and locks eyes with Natasha. “But I can’t ignore the fact that it might help. And I’d never want to deny my kids something that could help them. So, yes. I’m okay with it.”

Natasha, who Laura knows has been more tense than usual, relaxes at her words. “I’ll finish cleaning up down here if you want to get changed,” she offers. Laura nods as she leaves the kitchen, passing through the living room and curbing a smile at the sight -- Lila curled up against Clint’s side, resting her head against his chest while he reads softly. She files the image away for a rainy day as she walks up the stairs, heading to Cooper’s room.

“Hey,” Laura says after knocking, pushing the door open and tripping over papers and spare baseball mitts. “Dad didn’t mean to yell at you before. You know that.”

Cooper looks up from a video game console and sighs, listlessly throwing the controller to the floor. “I know. He gets mad.”

“Sometimes,” Laura admits sadly. “We all do.” She waits to see if he’ll continue the conversation and when he doesn’t, she decides to continue. “I know there have been things going on that have been hard for you,” she says slowly. “It’s been hard for me, too. You’re not alone if you feel a little off.”

“I’m not?”

Cooper looks up, looking relieved, as if someone has taken a weight off of him. The sheer relief of Laura’s words seems to strip him of all his aging and in that instant, Laura sees her little boy -- the one that took them so long to create, the one that taught them about love and parenting and tough times, the one that brought them together on the long stretches of absences and late nights on missions. She fights back tears as her emotions get the best of her, thankful when she hears Natasha push open the door behind her.

“Hey, Coop,” she says lightly, holding out her cell phone. Cooper looks at the phone and narrows his eyes and Laura senses why; none of Cooper’s friends would call before nine and certainly none of them would call Natasha.

“For me?”

“Yes,” Natasha says, handing him the phone. Cooper takes it hesitantly and puts it to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Cooper,” a light voice answers, and Laura can just barely pick up the words on the other end of the line. “I’m a friend of your dad’s. My name’s Sharon Carter.”

“Oh. Hi,” Cooper answers, looking up at the adults. “Why are you calling me?”

“I just wanted to talk to you,” Sharon continues. “I thought you might want to talk about stuff that’s happened.”

“Like a therapist?” Cooper asks moodily, the very epitome of a teenager. “I already _have_ a therapist.”

“I know you do,” Sharon responds. “But I might be able to help, too. I know about Avengers stuff. I worked with them.”

“You did?” Cooper asks curiously, clearly intrigued. “What do you mean?”

Laura starts backing away until she’s standing in the doorway and Natasha puts her head on her shoulder. Together, they watch in silence as Cooper continues the conversation.

“Okay?” Natasha asks, so softly Laura can barely hear her, and Laura knows she’s not asking about the mess that they still need to finish cleaning up or the house.

“Yeah,” she responds, afraid to do anything that might ruin the moment. “I’m okay.”

 

***

 

A few weeks into spring, Clint’s out running errands when Laura texts him in the middle of Lowe’s.

_Emerg with Lila -- Grace is sick, party cancelled. Can u pick up Coop?_

Clint only grumbles a little bit at his shopping being cut short given that it’s already past one and he’s barely started to work the aisles, but he writes back _yes_ anyway and adds two smiley face emojis for good measure.

_Thanks. Mean it. Love you._

Clint smiles a real smile at the phone and puts it back in his pocket as he moves his cart along, trying to catalog a mental list of what he’s supposed to be getting even though he knows Laura had given him an ultimatum on buying home improvement tools years ago. By the time he’s made his way through the checkout line, he’s definitely bought more than he knows he’s going to be allowed, and as he loads the car, he finds himself wondering if he can offset his grievances by leaving most of it in the trunk and pretending to have bought in installments.

Despite a few bouts of slowed congestion around the shopping area, he still manages to make it to the school on time, managing to catch Cooper as he walks to the edge of the parking lot.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says enthusiastically as Cooper climbs into the minivan. “School was okay?”

“Yeah,” Cooper answers as he buckles his seat belt in the passenger seat. “Where’s mom?”

“Well, it seems your sister had a bit of a party emergency,” Clint answers as he maneuvers out of the parking lot. “So mom passed the pick-up duties to me. Lucky you, right?”

“Lucky me,” Cooper mutters, but Clint catches him smiling. He clears his throat quietly as he eases onto the road.

“Hey, so. You still, uh, wanna talk about anything that happened? You know, with...all that stuff?”

Cooper shrugs. “I think I’m okay,” he says. “But thanks for asking.”

“Yeah?” Clint frowns at the road. “So, like...nothing you wanna talk about? No questions, nothing bothering you?”

“Not really,” Cooper says, and Clint readies himself for whatever will come next, because he can tell Cooper isn’t done talking. “Why was Aunt Nat’s hair blonde for so long?”

Clint chokes back a laugh at the unexpected question. “Avengers stuff,” he says, throwing his son a smile. “Don’t worry, none of us liked it.”

Cooper smiles, ducking his boyish grin behind a mess of overgrown blonde hair. Clint reaches over and ruffles the unruly mop as they slow at a stop sign.

“You need a haircut.”

“ _Daaaaad_.”

“Sorry,” Clint apologizes. “But really, nothing you wanna talk about while you’ve got me alone? I swear I won’t tell if it’s secret.”

Cooper shifts in his seat and smiles. “I’m good, dad. Really. I’ve been talking to Sharon.”

“Sharon?” Clint gives him a sideways glance, his brow creasing. “Sharon who?”

“Uh.” Cooper looks a little confused, as if he’s not sure why Clint isn’t aware of this important piece of information. “Sharon Carter? She’s really nice.”

As Cooper’s words settle, dozens of questions spiral through Clint’s mind. _Why are you talking to Sharon? Did Sharon get dusted as well? What is she telling you? How did you even get her number? Did you steal Natasha’s phone? Are you going behind our backs?_

“Dad?”

Cooper’s voice cuts into Clint’s thoughts, and he manages to swallow down both his confusion and anger, though he’s aware he’s not even sure what he’s supposed to be angry about.

“Yeah.” Clint forces himself to slide back into dad mode. “Sorry, kiddo. I just didn’t know. But that’s cool.” He channels his voice into an optimistic tone, knowing that the last thing he wants to do is start a fight, especially when he’s not even sure who he’s supposed to be frustrated with.

“Yeah,” Cooper repeats nonchalantly. “She’s really good at talking. Like, a lot better than my therapist. She’s got fun stories, too.”

Clint bites down on his tongue, wondering how much he should trust Sharon freaking Carter when it comes to stories. He barely knew Sharon other than a few run-ins at SHIELD over the years; she had worked primarily out of the the Triskellion after she graduated from the Academy. If anything, Natasha knew her better, thanks to the work she’d done in DC with Steve.

“That’s good, Coop.”

Clint reaches for the radio, turning it to a pop rock station to help fill the silence for the rest of the ride. Cooper, for his part, seems to welcome the musical interlude, looking content in the seat next to him. As they finally pull up to the farm, Cooper turns to his dad with a smile.

“Thanks for being there, dad.”

For a moment, Clint’s unsure of how to respond, and unsure whether or not he should chalk up Cooper’s words to raging teenage hormones or genuine emotions. He decides to go with it and leans over, placing an arm around his son, enveloping him in an awkward side hug after he cuts the engine.

“Always, Coop. _Always_.”

Cooper takes his book bag and opens the car door, dragging himself towards the house. Clint follows, hanging back by the trunk, trying to decide if he should out himself for his errands joyride now or later.

“See something you like?” Natasha calls out. He turns and sees her standing by the barn, hair pulled up, clearly having just finished a workout.

“Yeah, my own idiocy,” Clint calls back, still half-reeling from Cooper’s comments. Natasha rolls her eyes as she walks over to him and Clint opens the trunk, pulling out a few heavy cans of paint, knowing he’s not going to last five seconds around her before he says something.

“So a funny thing happened in the car,” Clint offers when Natasha’s close enough that he doesn’t have to yell.

“What’s that?” Natasha asks, grabbing for one to the cans to help lighten the load.

“Cooper says he’s been talking to Sharon Carter.”

Natasha freezes in the middle of walking, turning to look at him with a guilty wince. “Oh.”

“Nat,” Clint continues, trying to keep his frustration from boiling over. “How long has Cooper been talking to Sharon?”

“Since a few weeks ago,” Natasha admits.

Clint blinks, feeling his face flush with anger. “A few _weeks_ ago? Why the hell didn’t you tell me? Or _ask_ me?”

“I asked and told Laura,” Natasha says, starting to walk again. “Considering how strongly she feels about Cooper talking to people that we work with, I felt that it was only fair to give her the news directly and let her make the call. So she did. She said she thought it was okay. And now I’m telling you. Sharon’s been great, Clint. She calls me with updates and I make sure Cooper’s not telling her anything that he’s not telling us.”

Clint lets out a long sigh as he follows Natasha towards the house, concentrating on the swing of her ponytail. “Sharon didn’t...disappear?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Natasha says, and Clint can tell she understands why he’s asked the question. “But she certainly felt the effects of what happened. And I think that having someone like that for Cooper is going to be helpful. Much more helpful than a therapist who just deals with anger issues. Cooper doesn’t even think of Sharon as a therapist, she’s just...she’s someone he can talk to who’s not his parents.”

Clint stays silent as they climb up the porch, placing the paint cans down on the deck. “Cooper seems happier,” Clint says as he straightens up. “He was in a really good mood when I picked him up from school.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Natasha asks knowingly. Clint nods, and puts a free hand on Natasha’s shoulder.

“You’re going to hate hearing this, but you’re a really good mom.”

Natasha makes a face and pushes past him, opening the front door. “Thanks for that, _Hawkeye_.”

Clint expects to find the house in some sort of messy disarray, given that Lila now has no party to go to and Nate hasn’t gone down for a nap (at least, not since last time he had checked in) but the house is mostly quiet. Clint moves through the living room, pausing in the kitchen to glance out the window. Laura is sitting on the grass with Nate, laughing and helping him run around, and Lila and Cooper are playing a form of tag. He leans over the sink, balancing on his elbows, and loses himself in the moment until he hears Natasha behind him.

“I’m taking my son’s advice,” Clint says, without turning around. “Next week I’m going to finally start going to therapy.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Natasha says dryly. Clint frowns at the window.

“Well, _you’re_ rude.”

“Am I? You’re about ten years too late with this revelation, but I’ll take it.” She reaches into her sweatshirt pocket and pulls out a sealed letter, passing it to him. Clint looks over at her as he takes it.

“Is that, like, my reward or something that you just happened to have handy?”

“No,” Natasha says with a roll of her eyes. “It’s from Steve.”

Clint fingers the envelope, running his finger along the creased edges.

“Does it say what happened?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha admits honestly. “I didn’t open it. I only asked him to give me updates on everyone, and he sent this over.” She pauses. “Do you want to know?”

Clint shakes his head, putting the letter in his pocket, knowing his answer hasn’t changed. “No,” he says, looking out the window again. He glances at Natasha. “Do you think she’ll be mad?”

“If we don’t tell them?” Natasha shrugs. “I don’t know. But I think for now, the only thing any of us care about is that we have our family back. Isn’t that what’s important?”

And without even thinking about it, Clint knows that she’s right. By some miracle, he had his family. He had Natasha. It was another string of trauma and growing that they could add to the moments they’d built up over the years -- the moments that they’d fought for and worked for in order to come out on the other side -- and maybe, in some ways, it was the hardest moment they’d had in a long time.

He knows that there’s still healing that needs to happen, for all of them. But what mattered right now is that they were together, and that would help them get through the bad parts.

As friends. As family.

“More than anything,” he says as Natasha’s arm circles his waist. Laura catches his gaze in the window, and he smiles as Lila’s laughter rings out over the lawn, a bright harmony of sunshine that lifts the clouds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every time I finish a fic in this series, I feel like I have to write some big, long end note. (Sorry, I know you all love it.) It’s kind of because I feel like I need to leave my readers with a proper wrap-up and thoughts (not to mention thanks) after taking them on a super long journey of words, but also because I like talking a little bit about a story that means a lot to me – as many of you know, this series in its entirety is one that is near and dear to my heart. And this series has always made an effort to stay rooted in canon, despite the fact that “canon” doesn’t technically include an OT3. 
> 
> But the world in which Laura, Natasha, Clint, Cooper, Nathaniel, Lila, and every other character experiences or talks about is the world that we know from the MCU, and the events and consequences that affect them are the events and consequences that we know from the MCU – they’re just the sides that we didn’t see (aka my interpretations!) It’s one of the things I’ve been most proud of throughout every story: being able to put my characters in a world that people recognize rather than an AU setting or something. (Even though there are people that probably classify this is as an AU story because of the relationship of Clint/Nat/Laura. That’s fine! Define it how you wish! This is just MY feeling.)
> 
> As is my wont, I started writing this directly after Infinity War, because I felt like there was a story to tell –- and I knew it would be long-ish, and that’s why I started it when I did. I made whatever I could out of literally nothing, building on story and my own assumptions/brainstorms/ideas. I think I had a point in my mind where I figured either more information would come out or I’d take long enough that the next movie (even previews/interviews) would give me something that would spark another plot idea, which is what happened in my post CACW story. But that didn’t happen, and so there became a point about halfway through in which I knew I had to make a decision: stretch out the storytelling until Endgame (and risk the fic becoming bloated and boring and too drawn-out), make slower updates and go without putting up a new chapter for 2-3 months until Endgame (and risk people losing interest in the fic entirely), or forge ahead and finish before Endgame, making a decision that would decidedly throw the fic a little out of canon.
> 
> Obviously, you know what I chose. And I chose it because this is a story that has always been about family, and working together, and losing together, and living together, and loving together, and learning together. More than any other fic (except maybe ILOTWTD) I wanted this to be focused on these characters as opposed to other supporting characters and other Avengers, save for important relationships like Wanda and Steve. And I felt like if I was taking readers on this long journey of Clint and Nat losing their family, I wanted them to have a payoff and not just a long story of random plot or a hastily pulled together conclusion. I wanted an ending, because I didn’t want to leave things up in the air -- and that's also why I kind of loosely left the interpretation of how everyone became "undusted" to the reader, because it wasn't as important to my overall meat of the story. 
> 
> So there’s no Ronin, no Japan, no Avengers HQ, no Captain Marvel, nothing that will probably come to head in Endgame whether or not we get any info about the farm (I would like there to be AT LEAST ONE REFERENCE? I feel like I deserve that! But I don’t trust the Russos.) And maybe that’s something I’ll work in later. I’ve learned not to say I’m done, because I don’t think I can ever fully leave this series, no matter how busy I get or no matter how many people leave fandom. I love these characters too much, I love this world I created too much, and if I can find a way to write something that I feel is worth telling a story of, I will –- whether that’s an AU-ish Ronin twist down the road, Captain Marvel showing up at some point, or hell, Cooper meeting Monica Rambeau.
> 
> I am so thankful to everyone for reading and commenting and leaving kudos. Whether you’re a repeat reader, first time reader, dedicated reader…whether you’ve read every fic so far in this series or just this one, I truly, truly appreciate everyone who has taken the time to invest in this story. It means the world to me, especially during a point when I feel like interest in MCU stuff is starting to wane even for the most dedicated of fans.
> 
> As always, I’m on tumblr @isjustprogress for all feelings. <3


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